Danskin 2009

Race Day!

2009-06-07T08:43:00.000-07:00

The alarm went off at 3:45 a.m. It was time to get up and get ready to drive to Walter E. Long Park for the Danskin.

I’d packed my transition bag and post-race gear the night before, right after doing a last run-through of T1 and T2. Kevin had packed his backpack and fanny pack with food, water, and a chair to sit in. Everything was ready to go.

While I put on my swimsuit under a t-shirt and shorts, Kevin fixed coffee and oatmeal for breakfast. I barely touched my coffee, which is unusual for me, but did drink water. I’d been drinking a lot of water since Wednesday – much more than I usually do – to make sure I was well hydrated for the race.

We left the house at 4:45 and made it to the Expo. Center parking lot by 5:05 a.m. There was a long line of school buses parked in the lot, waiting to take almost 2,000 athletes, plus all of the volunteers and spectators, to the race site, 1.4 miles up the road from the Expo. Center. At 5:15 sharp, the volunteers loaded us onto the bus with lots of other nervous triathletes and their friends/families and drove us to the race site, where we headed for transition. Unlike bike setup the day before, family and friends weren’t allowed in the transition area today, so I arranged to meet with Kevin in front of the bathrooms after I was done setting up my transition equipment and headed off. As we entered the transition area, the volunteers were asking to see the stickers mounted on our bike helmets before letting us in. I was so flustered trying to pull my helmet out of my transition bag that I dropped my spare tube and cordlock, and had to scramble to retrieve them before they were trampled.

Once I got to my bike, I noticed that someone had pushed a space between my bike and the other bikes that had been next to it, and had propped up their mountain bike between them by the kickstand. To do all of that, they would have had to touch other people’s equipment – an offense that can get you disqualified from a triathlon. Unfortunately, that wasn’t something easy to prove, so I found a volunteer and asked him to at least move the mountain bike so I’d have enough space to set up my gear. He did that, and then mounted the offending woman’s bike properly on the bar, by the saddle. It’s a good thing the woman never showed up while I was in transition, because I was all set to rip into her verbally. Fortunately, that never happened, because verbally abusive language can get you disqualified from a triathlon, too.

I mounted my water bottles on the bike, laid out my towel and gear to the left of it, then pumped up my tires to 80 psi. After packing my fanny pack with sunscreen, goggles, swim cap, t-shirt and shorts, and everything else I’d need for after the race, I left transition.

I found Kevin pretty easily outside transition, then left my fanny pack with him while I went to get bodymarked.

In the bodymarking area, there was a row of 4-5 volunteers standing next to small orange buckets filled with black felt-tip markers. I walked up to one, and she wrote my number, 572, on both arms and the fronts of both legs, then wrote my age on my calf. Even though I’m only 43, by triathlon rules, I’m in the 44-year-old category, since I’ll turn 44 before December 31st of this year. That means I’ll age up next year, and get to compete with the 45-49 year-olds.

By this time, it was almost 6:30, so we still had 30 minutes to wait before the race started. It was a good thing we had time to spare, since I ended up having to visit the porta-potties a couple of times before the race, along with everyone else, it seemed.

Finally, we wandered toward the starting line for the swim, which was at the boat dock, and joined the other women waiting there. People started grouping together and lining up based on which wave they would be going out in, designated by swim cap color.

First were both the amateur and professional elites. It looked like most of them were wearing red caps, but one had on a blue cap – I think she was the only pro. Then came Wave 2, the 60+ year-old and 19-and-under age groups, in light blue caps. They were followed by Waves 3 and 4, the 55-59 year-olds in green caps and 50-54 year-olds in yellow caps. The pink-capped cancer survivor and 45-49 year-old wave came next. And right behind them, us 40-44 year-olds in Wave 6 lined up in our red caps.

The swim started only a few minutes after 7 a.m, almost right on time. We all watched the elites as they waded into the water. When the buzzer went off, they started swimming, headed toward the first buoy. But something seemed wrong – they were swimming far to the left of the buoy line. What was going on? I remember hearing that a current in Decker Lake during last year’s race had caused swimmers to veer to the left, as well, so I made a mental note to be aware of any current and try to stick to the right until rounding the first buoy, if I could. A lot of other people in Waves 3 and 4 must have thought the same thing, because they all started over-correcting and swimming too far to the right. They were kept in line to the left by kayakers and to the right by a motorboat, so at least they couldn’t get too far off course.

As my wave started to wade into the water, I checked my goggles to make sure they weren’t going to leak, and positioned myself at the front and to the left of other people in my wave. As it turned out, the Trizones coach who’d led the clinics I’d gone to, Tracy, was right next to me. I remember comparing notes with her at one of the clinics, and her saying we swam at about the same pace, so figured if she was there, I was in the right spot. She turned and high-fived me, while I laughed and told her I wanted to draft off of her.

There were three minutes between swim waves. Nervously, we red-caps stood waist-deep in the water and waited our turn to go out. I started my watch timer. And finally, the starting buzzer went off.

There are no words to adequately describe the start of a triathlon swim. And as much as I’d tried to prepare myself for it, I was still taken by surprise at how chaotic it was. To give you an idea, picture swimming in a huge, thrashing crowd of bodies. The lake water is so cloudy that you can’t see a thing: Not the person next to you, or the person in front of you; not the buoy you’re supposed to be heading for; not the back-up landmark you noted, just in case you couldn’t see the buoy. Nothing. On top of that, nobody else can see anything, either. People keep blindly swimming into, over, and under each other. It was a complete free-for-all, and a miracle nobody drowned.

My first realization as my face hit the water was that I couldn’t see anything under the water – not even Tracy’s feet as I tried to draft off of her. I could feel them, because I kept slapping them with my hands. But I imagined 20 minutes of that might really annoy her, so I finally just waited for her to pull ahead of me.

My second realization during the swim was that I couldn’t see anything above the water, either. I tried to sight on the first buoy, and found that I couldn’t see that. Then, on my next sighting attempt, I looked for the double power line that was my back-up landmark for sighting, and couldn’t see that, either. I had no idea, at first, what to do. I finally decided to just stay between the kayaks and the boat, and follow the crowd of swim caps bobbing in the water and hope they were all going in the right direction.

As I plowed along, trying to keep swimming and not panic, I soon realized that I was surrounded by pink, green, and yellow caps, then blue – all of the waves in front of me. I must have been passing a lot of the slower people from previous waves. I really hoped I wasn’t hitting or kicking them in the process, but when you can’t see anything in the water, it’s hard to avoid running into someone. Kevin later told me he’d been watching me with binoculars, and saw me collide with a woman in a blue swimsuit, then change course and collide with some other women. It was completely crazy.

At one point, I remember looking up to sight/breathe and seeing a woman to my right swimming with a noodle. I didn’t notice what kind of swim cap she had on, but hoped she was a swim angel, since athletes aren’t supposed to make forward progress while using a flotation device.

Maybe halfway to the first buoy, I heard shouting, and popped my head up, yelling “what!?” There were two women in light blue caps treading water next to me. One said, “We’re right here.” I guess she was trying to keep people from swimming into them. I said okay, gave them some clearance, and continued swimming by.

Finally, I could see the first buoy about 20m away. I was right in line with it. From where I was swimming, I could also see a huge throng of swimmers, packed shoulder to shoulder, all rounding the buoy at once. I realized that, since I was so close to it, I couldn’t get to the far left soon enough to swim around the crowd, so I just had to swim right through it. I remember squeezing between two people who were close together, just to get by them. At some point, it dawned on me that I must be plowing over some of the stragglers from the 60+-year-old age group and the cancer survivor group, and I felt terrible, but I just had to keep swimming. The only way out of this mob was through it.

Things cleared out on the back straightaway, and I was finally able to get into a rhythm with my stroke. Since there were two smaller intermediate buoys along this section of the course, it was easier to sight. And the turn around the second main buoy was much less crowded than the first had been, so I finally started to relax a little.

Finally out of the crowd, and now able to swim freely and see where I was going, I was lulled into a false sense of security. It wasn’t meant to last. About 100m from the blue banner marking the swim finish, near the final buoy, a breaststroker in a blue swim cap kicked my goggles off. She was younger – I recall the 19-and-under group swam in the same wave as the 60+ year-olds. Stunned, I yelled, “Sh*t!”, without thinking, and she said “Sorry”, but it took me a few seconds to put my goggles back on, gather my wits, and start swimming again. Luckily, anticipating something like that happening, I’d put the goggles on so the strap was under my swim cap, and they never completely came off of my head. I don’t know what I would have done if they’d gotten lost in the water. The next morning, I looked in the bathroom mirror and started laughing – there was a little scab on the bridge of my nose, right where the goggle’s nosepiece had been, and right about where she must have kicked me.

The blue banner of the swim exit was finally close, and I was really glad to see it. As I finished the swim, I made sure to touch the sandy bottom of the lake twice before standing up, and immediately started running as I pulled off my swim cap and goggles. I felt a little tired, but a lot steadier on my feet than I’d expected. I hit the lap button on my watch just as I ran over the timing mat, and noticed that the swim had taken me 21 minutes and change…a little slower than I’d expected, but still within range of my time goal.

The run up the hill into transition wasn’t bad at all, and once in the transition area, I quickly found my bike. Because I’d practiced it so many times, the T1 routine was automatic. I:

- Put on my helmet.
- Pulled on my shorts.
- Wiped my feet off on the towel.
- Pulled on my socks, even though there was still grit on my feet.
- Put on my bike shoes.
- Unracked the bike, just like the volunteer had shown me the day before.

In my cycling shoes, I ran with my bike down the center aisle of the transition area to the bike start. As I passed over the timing mat and headed for the mount line, I heard my timing chip beep, which was reassuring, since I’d been worried it would malfunction and not record my times.

At the mount line, I’d been planning to run forward a ways and give people behind me some room to get on their bikes, but there was already someone blocking my way, so I just fell in line behind her and hopped on my bike. Kevin barely made it to the bike start in time to get a picture of my back as I rode off. He said he stood for a while and watched people get on their bikes, and a lot of people were still shaky from the swim, to the point where he was worried they were going to tip over.

The swim hadn’t made me dizzy or shaky, but it had made me very tired and sleepy. For the first mile on the bike, I was slumped in the saddle, trying to regain some energy. I decided not to push my pace. In spite of that, I was passing a lot of people. As I passed one woman, I said, “On your left”, and she replied, “everyone’s on my left.” I told her, “Not everyone.” I think that cheered her up.

The first mile of riding was down Decker Lake Road, then along the main road of the Expo. Center before turning right onto Decker Lane. When I got to Decker Lane, I’d recovered enough from the swim to try taking my first drink of Nuun. As I tipped the water bottle into my mouth, the top came off, spilling Nuun down the side of my face and chest. I grabbed the water bottle top in my teeth, re-racked the bottle, then screwed the lid back on with one hand, all while continuing to ride. Drinking went fine from that point on, and I didn’t lose much Nuun, which was good. I managed to drink almost the entire bottle while riding, which was my goal, since the bike leg is your best opportunity during a race to eat and drink. I’d originally planned to eat some Gu while riding on Decker Lane, too, but decided to wait until after the first major hill, where I knew there would be a nice, flat section of road.

As I passed some more women, saying “on your left” in a really subdued, tired voice, one of them said, emphatically, “Go, sister.” I thanked her. The encouragement gave me a little extra energy.

A lot of people were riding on the left and blocking the passing area, not getting out of the way when you said something. On Decker Lane, a woman rode up behind me to pass, just as I was about to pass someone else, and said “on your left,” but the person we were passing wouldn’t move. I feel obnoxious because I yelled, “on your left, on your left, on your left,” several times in a row, but the woman still didn’t move, leaving us to squeeze by her right next to the cones blocking off the lane. I remember one woman not yielding the left side of the road as I went by, and saying to me by way of explanation, “I’m riding here because the pavement is smoother.”

Four miles into the course, we turned right onto Lindell Lane, and the terrain changed to rolling hills on a rougher country road. I passed one woman walking her bike up one of the short hills, and wondered how she was going to deal with the two major hills later in the course at miles 6 and 10. The best way to ride rollers like these was to push your speed on the downhill and use momentum to gain as much ground as you could on the uphill, which was hard to do during a crowded race, but I tried anyway, with some success.

The final downhill on Lindell Lane ended at a 90-degree turn onto Blue Bluff Road. As soon as we turned, we’d be faced with the first steep hill of the course, which marked the halfway point of the bike leg. Since I’d ridden the course before, I knew this turn was a bit technical, and would require me to shift to an easier gear at just the right time, carefully hold my line as I rounded the corner, and pay close attention to the other riders around me so I didn’t cut anyone off or run into someone.

As I rounded the corner, I downshifted and slowed, looking behind and in front of me to make sure I was clear of other riders, and I’m really glad I was being careful. Just as I made the turn, a woman on a mountain bike sped past me on the left, turning really wide, and then cut over right in front of me, almost causing us to crash. When I first saw what she was doing, I started yelling, and so did someone behind me…I think it was another rider whom the girl had cut off. I yelled to the girl, “Stay inside the cones!” And heard her reply, “I didn’t know!” But at least we’d all managed to avoid a crash.

Because I’d had to brake for the woman who cut me off, taking the first big hill was harder, since I had very little momentum left to carry me up it. I still managed the climb without going into my easiest gear, probably from sheer adrenaline, passing a few people as I went.

The next turn was onto Bloor Road, another rough, scenic country road that was relatively flat and a good spot to eat, drink, and rest a little for the hills to come. As I turned, I remember glancing down at my cyclecomputer and being surprised that I’d only been riding for 20 minutes. I’d deliberately not been checking my pace, but 20 minutes for that first half of the bike course was fast (for me – the elites could do it in 15), and it looked likely that I’d easily make my time goal of 42-45 minutes for the bike leg. As I eased off on my pace a little, I tore the Gu off of my bike’s top tube and squeezed it into my mouth, then stuffed the empty packet into my makeshift trash bottle. As dorky as it looked, the trash bottle worked really well.

We took another right turn onto Hwy 130, and the start of the hilliest section of the course. As I was getting ready to turn, there was a woman coming up quickly on my left, looking like she was getting ready to pass. Just to make sure she knew what I was going to do and avoid an accident, I told her, “I’ll hold the inside line,” then hugged the white stripe on the side of the road as I turned, keeping out of her way. When I came around the corner, there was a slower woman just to my right, and I had to say, “On your left,” before passing her, while still trying to keep out of the other woman’s way. We all managed to avoid each other and not crash.

This last part of the course, before turning back on to Decker Lake Road, was tough, with two long hills to ride over, the last one relatively “steep “ (for Texas)– maybe a 7-8% grade. And since these were miles 8-10, our legs would be starting to get tired. As I plowed my way up the final hills, I felt like I was moving slowly, but I was still passing lots of people and getting tired of saying “on your left.” Finally, at the turnoff to Decker Lake Road, we saw volunteers waiting for us, directing us to turn right, and telling us, “Just one more mile!” From here, we could already see people on the run course behind the fence to our right.

Most of the last mile was flat on a nice, smooth road, and I spun in an easy gear for a while, trying to get my legs ready for the run. As we turned onto Blue Bluff Road, though, heading for the dismount line, there was a small hill. My legs were tired, but I got up out of the saddle to push my way up that last hill anyway. My cyclecomputer said I’d been riding for over 41 minutes, and I really wanted to finish strong on the bike - to heck with conserving energy for the run.

As I approached the dismount line, a volunteer started saying, “Get off the bike and walk it across the line.” I rode to within inches of the dismount line, braked hard, and got off my bike at the last minute, to the volunteer’s obvious relief, then started jogging towards transition. As I crossed the timing mat, I heard someone comment, “Fast bike time.” I don’t know if they were talking about me or not – probably not – but for me, it was a fast bike time. So far, I was pleased with how I was hitting my time goals. But I still had what I thought was my weakest event – the run – to get through.

I jogged with the bike to my rack spot and re-racked it, somehow knocking the end bar off the rack by accident. (When I got back to the transition area after the race, someone, probably a volunteer, had replaced the bar.)

I took off my bike shoes, then my helmet, and then bent over to put on my running shoes. I grabbed the race belt, putting it on while jogging to the run entrance. My calves felt tight, but nothing cramped. All of the brick workouts paid off, because the sensation of running after cycling wasn’t so bad.

As I exited transition, there was a woman jogging beside me, going about the same pace. We started chatting about how we were both glad to be done with the swim. I said I was still burping up lake water. She said she worked in water quality testing, and knowing some of the things she knows, she couldn’t wait to get home and shower after swimming in Decker Lake. She picked up her pace and moved on, and I maintained my shuffling jog, thinking about how much I disliked running and couldn’t wait for this part of the triathlon to be over, and how I hoped I’d make it through the run without throwing up. I remember grumbling to myself about all of this, and another woman overheard and encouraged me, saying, “It’s almost over – this is the last part.” Of course, she was right. Pretty soon, my legs started to recover, and I felt a little better.

As I shuffled along, I wasn’t passing nearly as many people as I’d passed on the bike. Slowly, though, I worked my way through a crowd of 50-60+ year-olds, with the occasional younger woman passing me. One older woman I passed said, in a plaintive voice, “Is everyone 44?” It made me smile.

After plodding along the fenceline for a while, we finally hit the first hairpin turn on the run course, and right there waiting was Olympic gold medalist Sheila Taormina, cheering us on. When I saw her, I smiled, and she commented, “That’s what I like to see – people smiling!”

Most of the run course was flat, but there was one long hill about a half-mile from the finish line. I didn’t want to walk any part of the run course, but even jogging, I felt slow. To get through that last hill, I imagined I was at the end of one of my long training runs, jogging up Peaceful Hill, a mile from home. I realized this hill wasn’t any steeper or longer than Peaceful Hill, which I’d run many times before – it just felt hard because I was tired. That thought is what got me through it.

As the hill ended, the course moved onto solid, flat pavement for the last .3 miles. The pavement felt good to my feet after running on grass for so long. I could see the finish line now, and I picked up my pace a little.

There were two timing mats near the finish line, and I wasn’t sure why. I heard the announcer say my name and bib number over the microphone as I ran past. We later speculated that the first mat was getting my name and race number off of the timing chip so that the announcer could read it, and the second mat was the actual finish line. But because there were two mats, I wasn’t sure when I was supposed to stop running. As I ran through the finish area, I asked, “Can I stop running now?” I suppose the answer was yes, because I had to stop so a little boy could hand me a finisher’s medal.

I heard Kevin calling my name – he was right there at the finish line, waiting for me, saying, “You did really well.” He’d clocked me at 1:38:24, and it turns out he was only one second off of my official time (1:38:23). We were both amazed at how closely I hit my time goals for all of the events.

Right after I finished, we ran into Tracy, who asked how I did, then invited us back to the Trizones tent later so I could tell her all about it.

Kevin suggested getting a massage, since the massage tent was almost empty but would probably be mobbed soon. It sounded like a great idea. Even though nothing felt injured, my hamstrings and calves had just worked pretty hard and were aching. I signed up for 10 minutes of massage, and a big, strong guy named Aaron worked all of the soreness out of my legs.

After the massage, Kevin steered me over to the food tent, and I got in line and filled a bag with fresh orange slices, watermelon, bagels and cream cheese. We went to where Kevin had set up the chair he’d brought under a tree, sat down, and ate, while talking about the race.

After eating, we found Tracy at the Trizones tent and I told her all of the highlights – getting my goggles kicked off during the swim, having my water bottle lid come off in my teeth while cycling, getting cut off on the bike course – and she told us about how she had passed Pam at the bike mount line and squeeked the rubber duck mounted on her handlebars, but Pam hadn’t seen her, and how Pam’s water bottle lid came off at the start of the bike ride and she’d lost all of her water.

By 10 a.m, transition had been re-opened to athletes, so I went to collect my bike and gear so that we could head home. While I was packing my transition bag, I saw two women who’d racked their bikes on the same bar as mine. One of them said to the other, without looking at me, “There’s the woman who moved our bikes.” I couldn’t tell if they were talking about me or not. I was a little upset at the thought they might have been, since, of course, I hadn’t touched anyone’s bikes, but because I had the ideal bike spot at the bar end, people probably assumed it had been me. I never did see the woman whose mountain bike had been shoved between mine and everyone else’s and set up by the kickstand. And it wasn’t worth confronting the other women about. So I didn’t say anything and just let it slide.

I left the transition area for the last time, found Kevin, and we headed off on the 1.4 mile trek back to the Expo. Center parking lot, wheeling the bike and carrying all of our gear. We were in a huge crowd of other people, all heading in the same direction. It looked like a parade. Kevin ended up carrying everything but my fanny pack and wheeling the bike. I got a good picture of him loaded down with all of our gear as we followed the crowd to the Expo. Center.

Taking the bike out of the car after getting home, we noticed the front tire was flat – big mystery, because I’m sure it hadn’t been flat before putting it in the car – certainly not on the course. When I checked the tire the day after the race, I found a thin metal wire – like a staple – embedded in the tire. That decided it – faster or not, the slicks were coming off of the bike. I missed my reliable, puncture-proof tires, even if they were heavy and slow.

A couple of days later, while I was putting the old tires back on the bike, I noticed my rear wheel wobbled quite a bit. Kevin took the hub apart and found that the axle on my rear wheel had sheared through, possibly during the race. I’m glad I was able to finish the race before all of the bike problems surfaced.

During the run, even before I’d crossed the finish line, I was already planning what I wanted to do for next year’s race. It makes me laugh, because if you’re doing that when you’re dead tired at the end of your first triathlon, you know you’re hooked.

***

Here were my final times for the race, and how they compared to my time goals:

Swim goal: 20:00-22:00 min (2:30 min/100 m pool pace)
Actual swim time: 21:54

Bike goal: 42-45 min (16-17 mph pace)
Actual bike time: 42:00 (17.1 mph)

Run goal: 30:30-33:00 min (9:52-10:38 min/mi pace)
Actual run time: 30:57 (9:59 min/mi pace)

T1 goal: 3:30
Actual T1 time: 2:10

T2 goal: 1:30
Actual T2 time: 1:20

Total time goal: 1 hr 37:30 min - 1 hr 45:00 min
Actual total time: 1 hr 38:23 min

Registration Day

2009-06-06T08:40:00.000-07:00

Today, Kevin and I loaded my bike in the car and headed out to the Expo Center to pick up my registration packet, drop off my bike in the transition area near Decker Lake, and listen to a one-hour presentation on what to expect during the race.

Registration started at 10 a.m. When we got to the Expo Center at 9:50, there was already a long line of women stretching from the Expo. Center into the parking lot. Fortunately, once registration opened, the line moved quickly. I didn’t even need to stop outside the door to look up my race number on the roster, since I’d looked it up online on Thursday and remembered what it was.

My race number was 572. When I picked up my packet, the volunteer handed me a red swim cap and pointed out that our start time and wave number were printed on our registration packet. I was in wave 6, right behind the cancer survivors in their pink caps who were swimming in wave 5. We were scheduled to be in the water at 7:15 a.m. That was a lucky break, because it meant we’d be finished racing before it really became warm, and before the winds picked up on the bike course.

Kevin met me outside the Expo. Center, and we drove the 1.4 miles to the race site at Walter E. Long Park to drop off my bike in the transition area. Volunteers directed us into a dirt field where a lot of cars were already parked. We fixed the race number to the bike’s top tube and wheeled it into the transition area through what would turn out to be the swim finish. When we got there, a volunteer directed us to the bike rack assigned to the people in wave 6. One person had already racked her bike at the end closest to the swim finish, but the other end of the bar, which was on the main aisle leading to both the bike start/finish and the run start, was empty, so Kevin and I walked over and racked my bike there. This was another bit of luck, since an end position on the rack makes your bike much easier to find during transition. After asking a volunteer if it was okay (it was), I taped a Gu packet to the top tube of the bike so I wouldn’t have to do it in the morning. I then let a little bit of air out of each tire to keep the tubes from bursting in the heat, which happens a lot to bikes that are left out all day in transition before a race. Finally, I wrapped a red-and-black feather boa around the end of the bar to make our row easy to recognize from a distance, and tied my red bandana to the rack next to my bike.

After everything was set up and I’d memorized my bike’s position relative to the swim finish, bike start/finish, and run start, Kevin and I left transition to go scout out the swim course. We were hoping they’d dropped the buoys for the course already so we could see what it would be like, but they hadn’t. I was also hoping to get a good idea of the morning sun’s position relative to the course, but it was already too late in the day. By now, it was about lunchtime, so we found a picnic table in the shade and ate PBJ sandwiches, string cheese, and nuts that Kevin had brought with us. While eating, I was becoming more and more paranoid that someone had moved my bike, so after lunch we went back to the transition area so I could check on it. My bike was still in its end spot, and there were now six other bikes right next to it, all neatly racked by the saddles, alternating the direction they were facing, which was ideal. There was a volunteer there moving the bikes a little to line them up evenly along the bar. Since I still wasn’t sure how to unrack my bike when it was hanging by the saddle, we asked him, and he showed me how to take it off of the bar by grabbing the handlebar and the top tube, lifting/lowering the bike off of the bar, and wheeling it out, front end first. This time, I left the transition area feeling much more comfortable about leaving my bike there and getting through transitions during the race.

Last Pre-Race Workout

2009-06-05T08:39:00.000-07:00

Today was my last workout before the Danskin. Since I’m tapering, it was short – a 420m swim in Big Stacy Pool, followed by a 15-minute walk/jog on the dirt trail in the park, during my lunch hour.

When I arrived at the pool about 11:15, the parking lot was so packed that I had to park on the street, and the pool itself was very crowded. Since school was now out for the summer, a lot of parents were taking their kids to the pool during the day. To accommodate all of the kids, instead of the usual three lap lanes, there were just two today, and both already had 2-3 people in them. I talked to a guy swimming in one lane with a woman who was breast-stroking and asked if they’d mind circle swimming, and they were both really nice about it. Though the guy told me, “I’ve seen you here before – you’re fast!” And said he hoped we all could keep our different paces from being a problem. I thought it was funny that he said I was fast, since, really, I’m slow, but I guess speed is all relative. I was just doing seven untimed, easy laps today, which should take maybe 10 minutes. That meant I wasn’t worried about having to wait for anyone, so it worked out.

After swimming at Barton Springs last Sunday morning and being blinded by the sun to the point where I couldn’t sight, I was paranoid enough to go to the sporting goods store this week and buy a second pair of goggles that were tinted. I wore them for the first time today and didn’t notice much difference between them and the un-tinted goggles, so I think I’ll be okay with either pair during the triathlon.

After swimming, I slipped a pair of shorts on over my bathing suit, put on my socks and running shoes, and went jogging in the park, taking it easy on the flat dirt trails and enjoying the fact that this was the last time I’d have to run before the Danskin.

Cycling at the Driveway

2009-06-04T08:37:00.000-07:00

There’s a local bicycle racing course in Austin called the Driveway. Kevin and I went last Thursday to check it out and watch some of the races. On the first Thursday of the month, they have Lady’s Night, which includes a women-only bicycle race and a riding clinic. In the clinic, you can learn skills like drafting and riding in a pace line. Even though triathlons, including the Danskin, don’t allow drafting or riding abreast with other riders, the Danskin will involve riding in close proximity to other women, so I thought it might not hurt to try the clinic and see if I could pick up some tips on how to ride safely in a group situation.

I was treating the Driveway ride as a training day, so I had to get in roughly 15 miles. Kevin and I started by slowly riding the first 3.6 miles together while he showed me the Driveway’s three main course loops: The short, .52-mile upper loop; the 1-mile middle loop; and the 2-mile lower loop. The Lady’s Night race and clinic would take place on the short upper loop.

After our warm-up, Kevin and I split up and rode separately. I stuck to the upper loop, practicing taking corners and drafting off of other people for about 20 minutes or so. The pavement on the course was really smooth, making it a pleasant ride, and I started to push my pace a little, enjoying the sensation of speeding along on a flat course.

I rode until it was almost time for the men’s cat 3/4 race to begin, then cruised over to join Kevin, watch the race, and wait for the clinic to start.

By the time the clinic started at 6:15, there were maybe 30 women gathered waiting. I joined them as Lori introduced the two people who would be leading the clinic with her. Lori asked us to break ourselves into an A group, which would practice intermediate pack riding skills, and a B group, which would practice beginning skills, like riding in a pace line and drafting. There ended up being about 20 of us in the B group.

They had us line up, two abreast, for the pace line, and head out to the track, while Lori explained from the front how pack riding worked. We would be like a school of fish, moving in unison, each of us following the lead of the people in front of us. At least, that was the concept. It didn’t take long for the pace line to start breaking up as different people rode at different paces. I could hear Lori’s voice fade in and out as she rode from one group to another, giving instructions. It was hard to follow what she was saying. At one point, after I’d been dropped and was racing to catch up, Lori said, encouragingly, “Stick with the group!” and I replied, “I’m trying!” When I finally caught up, the group was starting to turn a corner. I tried to settle into a spot in the pace line and follow the wheel of the woman in front of me, but suddenly, just as we started to turn, another woman seemed to come out of nowhere on my left. I remember yelling as our shoulders brushed. She dropped behind me a little as I struggled to control my bike and keep from falling. She wasn’t so lucky, and I could sense her fall to the ground behind me as I pulled away. So much for learning how to ride safely in a group. I turned and yelled, “Is she okay!?” But Lori just told us to keep riding, so I did. When I passed by on the next lap, the woman was standing, but it looked like her saddle was twisted at an odd angle. On the lap after that, she was gone.

After we’d ridden for about 20 minutes, Lori and the other women leading the clinic stopped us and said it was time for the race. I wheeled my bike off to the side of the course and watched so I could time how fast they went. The main pack ended up averaging 23.6 mph, which was pretty impressive.

After the race, I tried looking for the woman who’d fallen to see how she was, but I couldn’t find her, so I just went home.

The accident was pretty sobering. Incidentally, my pre-clinic solo ride averaged 17.4 mph (5.8 miles over 20 minutes), and my clinic ride averaged 17.8 mph (6.4 miles over a little under 22 minutes), which is fast, for me. On the Danskin course, it’s going to be tempting to push my speed. But there will be a lot of inexperienced riders out there, so I’m going to have to remain careful and alert. I don’t want speed to come at the expense of safety.

Tapers and Time Trials

2009-06-02T08:34:00.000-07:00

During my past two swims, the sensation of my feet staying high and tapping the surface of the water has gotten more and more frequent. Today, I felt it probably 90% of the time. I also felt the sensation of gliding through the water pretty frequently, too – I’ve been feeling much more streamlined lately. Coincidentally, my swim times decreased a little more today, to a 2:25 pace, or 800m in 19:20: my fastest pool time ever. It could have just been that I wasn’t holding back on speed, since I’m tapering this week and knew I was only going to swim 900m. But I also never came close to going anaerobic at the 2:25 pace. It makes me wonder what’s going to happen on Sunday, when the adrenaline kicks in, I know I’ll only need to swim 800m, and there will be lots of other people in the water to chase.

***

This evening, I went out to the middle school track for my final 30-minute run. Running on the track allowed me get an accurate estimate of my current running pace, which I haven’t been able to do for my runs around the neighborhood. I’ll need to know my pace so I can base my run time goal for the triathlon on something realistic, instead of just wishful thinking.

It was a little after 6 p.m. by the time I made it to the school. It had been a hot day, in the mid-90s, and at 6, it was still baking outside. The track was in direct sun, and the heat radiated off of the black rubber surface, making it feel even hotter.

Wanting to get the run over with, I treated the walk from my car to the track as my warm-up, and, getting into Lane 1 at the finish line mark, started my watch timer and began jogging right away. The plan was to run 12 laps, which would be very close to three miles. I would try to keep my usual easy pace instead of going as fast as I could, to make sure my baseline for a steady running pace was accurate.

Thanks to the heat, by the time I’d run 3 laps, I was starting to suffer. My usual pace – a steady three-steps-inhale, three-steps-exhale – felt dead-on, but I also felt like I was working harder than I wanted to be. By the time I’d run 9 laps, I forced myself to slow down, but the “slower” pace only knocked 2-3 seconds off of my usual, remarkably steady lap time, which ranged from 2:20-2:22. Finally, I finished Lap 12 and hit the stop button on my watch, then walked a half-lap around the track to cool down. My watch timer said I’d run the 12 laps in 28:22. When I calculated the pace later, it came out to a 9:30 mile. For a 5K, that would be 29:33.

So now I know how fast my steady running pace is. The general rule for sprint triathlon runs, I gather, is to add an extra minute per mile to your usual pace. So my new time goal for the run is 32:33.

Swimming is Great Rehab

2009-05-31T08:31:00.000-07:00

When I woke up this morning and tried to walk, the pain in my right calf was just as bad as it had been the day before. I decided to skip both the Decker Lake ride and the stationary bike at the gym and go to Barton Springs to swim instead.

If it wasn’t for the possibility that my calf might not heal before next week’s race, I’d actually feel pretty good about getting to swim at Barton Springs instead of riding the boring stationary bike at the gym. I’d been wanting to get back to Barton Springs and see if my “open water” swim times had improved as much as my pool times had. Plus, I just plain wanted to swim at Barton Springs, where I wouldn’t have to stop every 30m or so at a wall and turn around, and where I could watch the fish swim below me.

Even at 7:45 on a Sunday morning, it seemed like everyone else in Austin wanted to swim at Barton Springs, too. When I arrived, the parking lot was packed, and so was the pool. There were so many people swimming laps that there wasn’t really a clear spot I could find to swim in a straight line, so I just picked a spot and went. I figured at least all of the practice dodging other people would be good preparation for a triathlon swim.

One of the first things I noticed as I started to swim was that all of the practice keeping my legs from sinking while I swam was paying off – they were floating towards the surface really well today, and I felt more streamlined than usual – as if I was gliding through the water. Recently, I’ve noticed I seem to be developing more of a sense of how not to throw my balance off in the water while swimming – keeping my legs from sinking, swimming “downhill”, and rotating my whole body to the side in order to breathe. Or I could just be imagining it, since I still feel like I don’t know what the heck I’m doing in the water. When this is all over, I’m definitely taking a swimming class.

When I was about 25m away from finishing my first lap, a guy swimming by me splashed water in my face just as I took a breath, and I ended up inhaling a bunch of it and choking. Blech. I guess that was good triathlon swimming practice, too, though.

I ended up swimming my 1200m in three sets of 400m each. Every time I’d finish a 400m lap and stop, I’d look in vain for a clear “lane” to swim in, then finally give up and head off for my next lap, dodging people as I went.

In spite of the crowded conditions, my swim time has, in fact, improved since the last time I swam at Barton Springs. The first time I swam 800m in 22:07, and today I swam 800m in 20:29. My “open water” times are still a little slower than my pool times, but not by much. As long as I don’t get too much water splashed in my face while trying to breathe, I should be okay during the swim portion of the triathlon next week.

Water for People Walk/Run

2009-05-30T08:28:00.000-07:00

Today was the annual Water for People walk/run at the Town Lake hike and bike trail. It’s an event organized by my friend Neil to raise money for the organization Water for People. It’s a worthwhile organization, and I’d been gathering donations and looking forward to participating in the event for the past several weeks now. Of course, I also had to squeeze in a 60-minute training run today. Since the first part of the Water for People run/walk would be a 4-mile walk around Town Lake that all participants would do together, and I wasn’t sure I’d feel like running after the walk, I decided to get my run in before the walk.

I parked across from the main trailhead at the Mopac Pedestrian Bridge, planning to run along the loop trail from Mopac to South Congress, across the South Congress Bridge, and back along the other side of the lake – a total of about 4.5 miles, which should get me back to the trailhead in plenty of time to meet up with the rest of the Water for People walkers at 8 a.m, when the event started.

Town Lake is a very popular place with local runners. When I arrived there at about 6:45 a.m, the trails were already packed with people.

I walked for five minutes to warm up, then started my run. The weather was relatively cool and there was plenty of shade along the trail, so running felt pretty good. Everything went fine until about 45 minutes into the run. I’d already passed under the Lamar Bridge, which isn’t very far from Mopac, but I should have already made it to the Mopac pedestrian bridge by now, and it was nowhere in sight. The scenery looked different from what I remembered the last time I’d run at Town Lake, too. I asked a group of men jogging in the opposite direction where Mopac was, and they pointed behind me – in the direction I’d come from. I’d somehow gotten off of the main trail and was heading along Barton Creek, towards Barton Springs! The guy at the head of the group said, “We’re heading that direction – you can just follow us.”

So I did, until we came to the bridge I had to cross to get back to the main trail. When we got there, the guy said,

“Just cross that bridge and follow the path – and don’t take any side paths!”

I promised I wouldn’t and thanked him, then ran on my way, finally heading in the right direction. By now, I’d been running for almost 50 minutes, and still had about a mile to go. I was starting to worry that I wouldn’t make it back to the trailhead in time for the Water for People event.

About 55 minutes into my run, when I could finally see the pedestrian bridge and knew I was close to finishing, my right calf cramped really hard. I ended up limping across the bridge at minute 59, finally slowing to a walk, trying to stretch out my calf. It was 7:58 - I’d made it back to the trailhead just in time for the organized walk. There was already a sizeable group of Water for People walk/run participants wearing dark blue t-shirts milling around at the trailhead. I got my fanny pack from my car and went to say hi to Neil and sign in for the event.

It took us about 1:20 to walk the 4.1 mile loop around Town Lake from Mopac to S. 1st street and back, wearing our event bibs and carrying Water for People signs to help raise awareness for the organization. One woman stopped us and asked if there was a web site she could go to in order to donate something, which was really cool.

Unfortunately, my calf hurt for the entire walk, and it still hurts now. After getting home, I nursed it with ibuprofen, foam roller massage, and a heating pad, all of which seem to help, but it hasn’t gone away. I e-mailed Kevin, since he and I were supposed to meet at Decker Lake early tomorrow morning to ride the Danskin bike course with the Trizones group, and he called me on the phone. After talking it out, we decided that he’d just ride to my house tomorrow morning instead. Depending on how my leg felt in the morning, I’d decide whether to ride the course with the Trizones group or just go to the gym and ride the stationary bike. I was really disappointed that I might not get to do the ride, since I’d been looking forward to it, but the bike course is tough – if there was any chance at all that I could over-strain my leg riding the hills on that course, I might not be able to participate in the Danskin at all next week. The past two months of training would have been wasted, all because I didn’t know when to say “enough.” As disappointed as I was at the thought of missing the ride, I thought it might be for the best.

1200m Swim

2009-05-27T08:22:00.000-07:00

I completely forgot Barton Springs pool was closed on Thursdays for cleaning, so I tried to go there over my lunch break today and was very disappointed. I ended up going to Big Stacy instead.

It was pretty crowded at Big Stacy, since I got there around noon – a little later than I usually go. I ended up having to share a lane with two other people, so got to practice circle swimming for the first time. It worked out okay, since we were all swimming about the same pace.

When I took the open water swim clinic, they taught us that your legs and feet should be high in the water, in line with the rest of your body, to minimize drag. It’s a really common new swimmer mistake to let your legs sink. When you’re swimming correctly, your toes should feel like they’re just tapping the surface of the water. So today, I focused on getting my feet to stay high while I swam. It didn’t seem to affect my swimming time, which was the same today as it’s been for the past two sessions, but I did get the “feet tapping the surface” sensation more and more frequently as the workout progressed.

The Down-Side to Slicks

2009-05-27T08:18:00.000-07:00

When I got home from work last night, I encountered the down-side to the new slick bicycle tires. My rear wheel was flat. Kevin actually discovered it around 9 p.m, as we were discussing where we wanted to ride the next afternoon.

I decided to fix the flat right away so that I didn’t have to hassle with it after work the next day, right before a training ride. So I pulled the old tube off of the tire, pumped it up, and found the leak – a tiny pinhole. I then felt around the inside of the tire itself, looking for anything that might have caused the leak, and soon found it – a thin piece of wire, maybe .25 inches long, that had punctured right through my tire and become lodged in the rubber. The wire was so thin that it was barely visible from the outside of the tire, but you could definitely feel it inside. I got a pair of pliers and pulled it out, then patched the old tube. Instead of reusing the freshly patched tube, though, I wanted to put a new one on the bike. The first “new” one I tested had a hole in it. I tested a second one, and after not finding a leak, put it on the wheel, partially inflated it, checked carefully to make sure the tube wasn’t being pinched by the rim, then inflated it the rest of the way. After getting the wheel back on the bike, everything seemed okay, so we left the bike in the garage and went to bed.

When I got up the next morning and started to load all of my cycling gear in the car, we discovered that my bike’s rear tire was once again flat. Since I needed to get to work, Kevin told me he’d try fixing the flat during the day, and I could come home after work and pick up the bike before meeting him at the veloway.

While at work, I got the following e-mail from Kevin:

“The tube you put in was bad. It had a leak at the edge of a rectangular shaped region that matches the size and shape of my tire boots. I think we used a boot in Burnet when you got the flat from the large nail, since it left a good size hole in that tire, so this was likely the tube you used as a replacement back then. The edge of the tire boot had cut into the tube over time. I don't know if the hole was already there and you forgot about it, or if it was just weak and old, and finally gave up under new pressure."

“So fortunately the flat wasn't caused by more hidden debris. I took the tire completely off and looked at the inside of it on the porch in good light and ran my thumb all the way around. Couldn't feel a thing, so I think the tire is fine.”

“I pumped up your other 'new' tube before putting it in the tire…I didn't see any nicks in the new tube and it held air fine for half an hour on its own before I went ahead and installed it on the wheel. It doesn't show any evidence of having been patched or used before. It's currently pumped to 80psi. I'll keep an eye on it today... I put the tube you patched last night into your saddle bag as your spare.”

Bless him. Looks like we’d be good to go on our ride at the veloway this afternoon. But I need to pick up a new patch kit and a couple of new tubes at the bike shop this week, since it looks like all of my spare tubes have holes in them.

***

After stopping by the house after work to change clothes and pick up the bike, I headed out to meet Kevin at the Veloway.

I got there at 4:30. It was pretty hot out, but I’d filled my water bottles with Nuun and water and put on sunscreen before leaving the house, so I was as prepared as you can be to ride in the Texas heat. Kevin was already at the Veloway waiting for me, sitting in the only bit of shade under a tree and already soaked with sweat.

The Veloway is a 3.06-mile paved loop, mostly flat, on the south edge of Austin, that was made for use by recreational cyclists and rollerbladers. It’s nice to train on, because you can ride continuously without worrying about traffic or stoplights. The course rules state that the loop should be ridden in a clockwise direction. It’s divided by a painted stripe down the middle – slower traffic stays to the right, and to pass, you can use the left-hand lane.

We started off planning to ride five three-mile loops, then finish with a one-mile cool-down loop, taking a paved cut-through on the course that was there for that purpose. Kevin suggested that I lead the first loop at a warm-up pace, then lead the second loop at my usual riding pace. After that, he’d take the lead and ride slightly faster than my usual pace so I could chase him and push my speed. We’d continue that way for three laps, then do a final cool-down on the one-mile loop.

During the warm-up lap, I could tell my legs felt fatigued. I started off slowly for the first mile, then eased into a comfortable pace. As we passed the spot marking the beginning/end of the loop, which was the water fountain, Kevin remarked that I was going fast for a warm-up. Based on the time it took us to ride the first three miles, my pace came out to roughly 16.25 mph. For the second lap, I picked up the pace to where I was working moderately hard, but still comfortable – what I felt was my usual riding pace. About halfway through the lap, I remarked to Kevin that my legs felt tired today, and he said,

“For someone who’s tired, you’re riding at a pretty good clip.”

When we finished the second lap, I asked him what my pace had been. He said “17.5 mph.” We both agreed that I seemed to be pushing hard enough on my own, so I continued leading and setting the pace for the next three laps, and then the one-mile cool-down. Since I was tired, I decided to make lap 5 a cool-down as well. Here are my final paces for all six laps, based on my watch times. I ended up averaging 17.0 mph for the ride. Total distance according to my odometer was 16.6 miles.

Lap 1: 16.25 mph (11:19) (Warm-up lap)
Lap 2: 17.5 mph (10:28)
Lap 3: 17.4 mph (10.35)
Lap 4: 17.2 mph (10.40)
Lap 5: 16.7 mph (11.02) (Cool-down lap. Haha.)
Lap 6: 12 mph (5.00) (Final one-mile cool-down)

Run, Swim (Lather, Rinse, Repeat)

2009-05-26T08:17:00.000-07:00

Once again, I set my alarm for 5:00 a.m. in order to get in a 30-minute run before work. The morning temperatures weren’t too bad – maybe 70 degrees, and a little humid. After a five-minute walking warm-up, I ended up just running around my neighborhood for 25 minutes. The roads were paved and mostly flat, which was a nice change from running on grass, gravel, and hills on Sunday. It’s hard to calculate an accurate pace, but I think it was close to 9:37 for this run. I feel like I’m getting a little faster. It would be nice to do an actual time trial on a measured track, though, just to find out for sure.

At lunchtime, I went to Big Stacy Pool for what’s becoming my routine 1200m swim. I felt pretty tired during most of it, and wondered if the past week’s hard training was starting to catch up with me. Probably. Not surprisingly, my swim times were once again a little slow, with an estimated 20:16 pace for 800m. Still, if I can swim the Danskin course that fast, I’ll be happy.

The CapTex Tri

2009-05-25T08:13:00.000-07:00

Since today was Memorial Day, I had it off from work. It was also the day a huge local triathlon, called the Capitol of Texas Triathlon, would take place. So I got up at 5:30 in the morning to go downtown and watch the event. It would be a good opportunity to see how a triathlon worked, since I’d never been to one before.

I made it downtown at about 6:30, parked about a mile away from where the triathlon was being held, and walked in. As I was walking, I was joined by a steady stream of athletes headed to get bodymarked and then routed through the transition area, as well as their family and friends who’d come to cheer them on.
The triathlon didn’t start until 7 a.m, so I had plenty of time to walk down to Ladybird Lake, where the swim would be held, and find a good spot on the shore from where I could watch the start of the swim.

Since there were over 4,000 people participating in the triathlon, the athletes would start in waves, one small group at a time, depending on the division they were competing in. First, the Invitational (Elite) and specially abled athletes, wearing dark blue swim caps, would start, followed a few minutes later by Men >50 and <19 in red caps, Then Men 45-49 in light blue caps, Men 40-44 in yellow caps, and so on, in order of decreasing age. After the men, the Invitational women would start, in their hot-pink swim caps, followed by all of the other women’s waves, also in order of decreasing age. The race began with the Olympic distance athletes, and after they were all in the water, they started the Sprint distance race.

The start of the swim was in the water at a line defined by two buoys. The athletes from each wave, in turn, would jump into the water off of a dock, then swim out to the starting point, and wait for a signal before starting to swim.

By now, there were lots of athletes milling around the lake, waiting for their waves to start. Most of them were wearing wetsuits. They hadn’t known for sure whether they’d be allowed to, but the race organizers announced that they could maybe 30 minutes before the race, since the lake water was about 70 degrees.

The announcer had all of the athletes for the first two waves line up and wait, while he gave directions for the swim. The Olympic course was a 1500m clockwise loop, where the athletes would have to keep to the left of all of the buoys – except for the very last buoy, which they’d have to pass on the right before heading to the dock used for the swim exit, maybe 100ft to the right of the swim entrance.

Finally, at about 7:06, the race began. At the signal, the first wave of athletes, who’d entered the water and were waiting at the starting line between buoys, started swimming. It looked like a thrashing mass of arms and legs at first, but eventually people spread out. After about 9 minutes, the announcer said the first of the men’s Invitational athletes had passed the halfway point of the swim. My jaw dropped as I mentally tried to calculate the pace he must be swimming. That would have to be a 1:12 pace – very fast, even for a good swimmer. In fact, the first of the men was out of the water in about 20 minutes and headed for transition.

From where I was standing watching the swim start, I could turn around and look over the chain-link fence into the transition area, which was huge. Row upon row of bikes racked on metal bars filled a fenced-off rectangle of grass. There was maybe a foot of space between bikes – not much room for the athletes to place their gear. Some bikes were racked by the front of the saddle, others by the brake levers or handlebars. I saw some ordinary road bikes, but the large majority of the bikes were specialized Felt triathlon bikes or expensive-looking road bikes, many with high, skinny rims, some with disk wheels, most sporting aerobars. I think I saw one mountain bike during the entire race – this was definitely a different crowd than the one that would be racing in the Danskin.

I hurried away from the lake shore and to the 1st Street Bridge, from where I could watch the first men exit transition with their bikes. They were all pushing their bikes by the saddle, holding onto it with one hand while running. I remember reading somewhere that it’s best to wheel your bike out of transition that way, since it allows you to run in a more upright position and move faster.

As I moved further up the bridge, I was able to look right down into the water of Ladybird Lake and watch the swimmers pass by below me as they headed towards the last buoy. Remember, this was the only buoy on the course that they were supposed to swim around to the right. Predictably, some swimmers went to the left and got sent back to re-swim the last leg of the course. To make things worse, some of the volunteers on these surfboards-with-paddles directing the race in the water began blocking off the right side of the buoy so they could steer people to the left. Soon, one of them hurriedly paddled to shore, came back, and from then on, they began steering everyone in the correct direction. Even the volunteers were confused!

I watched the swimming for a little longer, until the first women’s wave in their bright pink caps began passing the men’s age-groupers, then headed back to where I could watch transition, just in time to see the first women wheeling their bikes out of the transition area. From there, if I looked behind me, I could see the cyclists racing across the bridge towards one of the turn-around points on the bike loop. The woman standing next to me told me the cyclists were supposed to ride the loop four times. Her son was racing in the Invitational group, and he was on his last lap. As he passed us, he stuck his tongue out, and I said to her, “That must be him.” She laughed and said yes. As she left to go watch him on the run, I told her, “Good luck to your son.” And she said thanks.

As I watched the cyclists, I wondered how hard it must be to turn the tight corner at the end of the loop. Probably tricky, since they were all slowing down for it. As I watched, one guy even crashed as he lost control of his bike taking the turn.

As more and more people finished the swim, the bike course began to get crowded. I could tell people were trying to stay a good distance away from each other to avoid drafting, but eventually it became impossible – there just wasn’t enough room.

I turned around again, this time to watch the cyclists coming out of transition and moving across the mount line. You could hear the “clop, clop” as a lot of them tried to run in cycling shoes. A few of them had their shoes already clipped onto their pedals. One guy dropped his water bottle as he started riding, and another athlete behind him kindly picked it up and handed it to him as he went by.

After watching people mount their bikes for a while, I looked over at the running course and saw that there were already a fair number of people running, so I walked over to watch. As the runners passed by, I noticed that they looked tired and sweaty, and their legs were wobbly. As one guy passed a couple of others running in the opposite direction on the loop, I heard him give them a few words of encouragement…”Come on, only a little bit more to go.”

The run course was another loop, but I don’t know how many times the athletes had to circle it. Definitely more than once, since I saw some people a couple of times, at least. A bike went by on the run course, and the guy riding it announced that the person running right behind him was the men’s leader. I watched the man in the lead finish the race before leaving at about 9:15 – so, the men’s Olympic distance winner finished in about 2:00 hours, maybe a little less. As I walked off a few minutes later, I heard them announce the women’s first-place finisher, and say that she was 46 years old. Now that was inspiration.

Another Long Run

2009-05-24T08:11:00.000-07:00

The training days I dread the most are the long runs. It figures that the run would be the last event of the triathlon, too.

Today, I started my run at 8 a.m. so I could get it over with early in the day. It had rained overnight and the front had cooled everything off, so it was an ideal 68 degrees when I left the house. After walking the first five minutes to warm up, I began jogging towards Peaceful Hill. The plan was to jog on neighborhood streets for 10 minutes, run “cross-country” laps on the middle school’s gravel/grass track for another 20-25 minutes, then finish by running up Peaceful Hill and back home.

Running on the grass of the track felt much easier on my knees than running on asphalt, and it was flat terrain, too, so it was actually a pretty nice run today, made even better by the thought of a rest day tomorrow and the fact that I only have one 60-minute-long run left on my training schedule.

Experiments in Eating and Drinking on the Bike

2009-05-23T08:08:00.000-07:00

The riding weather today was humid and a little hot, made worse by the fact that Kevin and I got a late start on our ride. Just like last week, he was riding the 37 miles back to his house from mine, and I was going to join him for the first 10-11 miles. We left my house a little after 9 a.m.

Today, I was trying a couple of new things on the bike. I’d filled my large water bottle with a sugarless electrolyte replacement drink called Nuun that Tracy had recommended, hoping it would be easier on my stomach than Gatorade. I’d also taped a packet of chocolate Gu to my bike’s top tube and a small medicine bottle to my handlebar stem so that I could practice eating the Gu while riding and depositing the wrapper in the bottle when I was done.

As usual, I told myself I was going to focus on getting in the distance and not pushing my speed, since I don’t want to get injured so soon before the race. But apparently I have only two speeds these days on the bike – stop, and full-throttle GO!

Maybe because I wasn’t being careful about going too fast, I felt really tired today. The previous week of increased training felt like it was catching up to me.

As Kevin and I sped up to the Slaughter/Brody intersection about four miles from my house, I rode between the sidewalk and the line of cars waiting in the right-hand lane for the light to change – always a little risky, since drivers turning right may not see cyclists. When the light changed, the car right in front of me went straight, but the car right next to me turned right in front of me. Since I’d been wondering if that was going to happen, I had my brakes engaged and was able to ride slowly enough to wait for the car to go past me, but it was still a close call.

All during the ride, I made sure to drink the Nuun at regular intervals. The flavor was pleasant, and it wasn’t too sweet, but my stomach was still a little upset by it. Not nearly as badly as with the Gatorade – it definitely didn’t make me almost throw up. So if I have to use a sports drink for the race, I think I’ll be able to tolerate the Nuun.

About nine miles into the ride, near the point where I’d be turning around to go back home, I tried eating the Gu, squeezing as much out of it as I could to try and avoid having it drip everywhere when I folded the package to put it in my makeshift trash receptacle. It ended up dripping all over my fingers anyway as I tried to eat it. I licked off my fingers and folded the packet one-handed, then stuffed it into the bottle. It went in without too much trouble. So it looked like the trash disposal problem would be solved for the race.

Kevin and I rode up a big hill right before getting to the intersection where I would be turning around to go home. I’d known the hill was coming, and knew it would be best to get in some hill riding before the Danskin, but right before we started up the hill, I told Kevin,

“I don’t know if I want to ride up the hill.”

“You don’t have to – you can turn around here like you did last week.”

“I don’t know…”

I rode up the hill. Some days, this feels like a very masochistic sport. I was tired and the hill was as hard as I thought it would be, but I made it to the top, huffing and puffing.

When we got to the top, I said goodbye to Kevin, made a u-turn, and headed back down the hill, hitting 33+ mph on the way. That was the best part about hills.

The second half of the ride was much easier than the first, since it involved a net elevation loss and a tailwind from the north. I made it home in about 1:23 hours:minutes total time, but 1:18 riding time, after riding a total of 21.3 miles. My average riding speed was 16.3 mph, which is pretty consistent with what it’s been for the past few weeks.

I waited until 7 p.m. to do my 30-minute recovery walk around the neighborhood. I could tell I was a little stiff and sore from the ride, and I’d chafed pretty badly, but my knees were holding out, so maybe I didn’t push it too hard after all.

Busy Day

2009-05-21T08:05:00.000-07:00

Today was going to be busy. Somehow, I had to squeeze in a 45-minute walk, a 1200m swim, and an evening clinic at REI, where Trizones was going to go over the Danskin swim, bike, and run courses with us, filling us in on what to expect. Amazing how much of triathlon training comes down to good time management.

I spent my lunch hour walking the hilly neighborhood roads around where I work. My legs felt fatigued from the biking the night before, but it was a pleasant, sunny day, the scenery was nice, and I took the iPod with me and listened to a lot of good music while walking. After getting back from the walk, I noticed my right knee was bothering me a little – it had started the night before, and wasn’t very painful, but no matter how careful I am about spinning high gears on the bike, riding hills really bothers my knees.

After work, I went to meet Kevin at Barton Springs to do some more open water swim practice. As I walked up to Kevin, he pointed to the “Closed for Cleaning” sign at the pool entrance, so we made a quick decision to try swimming at Deep Eddy Pool instead. I’d never been there before, and was curious to see what it was like. We loaded Kevin’s bike in the car and wove our way through rush hour traffic, parking at the Town Lake trailhead and walking the rest of the way to the pool.

My impression of Deep Eddy was that it was big, dirty, and crowded. There were a lot of lap lanes, but there were already two people swimming in each one, so Kevin and I had to wait in line for a lane. Luckily, two spots in lanes right next to each other came free pretty quickly, so we got in to swim.

Deep Eddy Pool is 100ft in length, just like Big Stacy, so I planned to do my usual 20 laps (1200m), with one warm-up and one cool-down lap. The workout started off pretty well, and my times were very similar to those of my last swim workout, until about lap 7, when I fumbled the lap button. After getting out of the pool, we figured out that I’d accidentally clicked the lap button twice, but while swimming, I had no idea what I’d done. Because of that I ended up cutting my workout short by a lap.

Not even halfway through the swim, I could tell I was getting tired. My lap times kept getting slower and slower, and my elbows started dropping on the recovery part of the stroke. I tried to focus on technique, but it was hard, since I have no idea what I’m doing in the water, technique-wise. I alternated several times during the swim between worrying that I was hard-wiring bad technique and resolving to take a real swim class when the triathlon was over. On top of that, the mellow guy who’d been swimming in the other half of the lane next to me was replaced by a woman who sped through the water effortlessly, doing flip-turns off the sides of the pool and passing me multiple times, as if I were standing still. After getting out of the pool, I told Kevin:

“I hate swimming.”

He looked at me incredulously and laughed. I haven’t said that in weeks. In fact, lately, I’ve confessed to almost enjoying my swim workouts. But not today.

I have to note here that, after crunching the numbers, my 800m pace for today was 20:24. While I felt tired and slow, it’s good to remember that my 800m pace just a few weeks before (5-06-09) had been 21:28. So as much as I feel like I’m not making any swimming progress, I need to not get discouraged and keep in mind that I really am.

After we finished swimming, we headed to Freebirds for dinner, and then to the Trizones course clinic downtown.

We got there 10 minutes early and had no trouble finding seats, but by the time the presentation was about to start, the room was packed to standing-room-only capacity with women. Kevin compared it later to the cram sessions you’d see at college right before a final exam, when the classroom was packed for the first time since the school year started. People were finally getting serious about the race.

Just like with the past two Trizones clinics we’d been to, Tracy was the presenter, and she did a great job explaining registration, packet pick-up, setting up transition, and how the race itself would work. She also described the course for us, and answered many, many questions. Which was good, because we all had a lot of questions. In fact, I found out:

- Open water swim distances are seldom accurate, so the swim may take more or less time than you expect.

- I would need some kind of electrolyte replacement in my water, even if it wasn’t Gatorade, since sports gel doesn’t contain electrolytes (darn). Tracy recommended trying Nuun, which comes in tablets that you drop into water and doesn’t contain any sugar. I picked some up at REI right before we left.

- You can be penalized for dropping things, like empty gel packets, on the course. So I need to figure out what to do with my empty gel packets. Kevin came up with the idea of using a small medicine bottle taped to my bike that I could use as a trash receptacle. It’s a very Kevin idea – I like it.

Tracy mentioned during her talk that, if it was our first triathlon, we should expect to finish in about 2:00-2:15, and my heart sank. I walked up to her at the end of the presentation and asked if she thought my time goal of 1:45 was unrealistic for a first triathlon. After finding out my training times, she said 1:45 didn’t sound unrealistic at all, but to give myself a 20-minute range – so, instead of trying to finish in 1:40-1:50, I should try for 1:35-1:55. And I should add a minute per mile to my 5K running pace – expect the run to be slow, for all sorts of reasons – fatigue, heat, the cross-country course. I should also expect the unexpected – there are a lot of factors that determine how long a race will take, many of them out of your control. At the Trek triathlon the week before, a cold, wet front blew in. They did the race in 60-degree weather, with choppy water and clods of mud sticking to their shoes during the cross-country run. So you never know what can happen.

Maybe I should just leave the watch at home, trust in my training, race my heart out, and enjoy the experience.

Cycling the Danskin Course: Take Two

2009-05-20T08:02:00.000-07:00

Last night, I was using Gmaps Pedometer to check out possible bike routes around my neighborhood for today’s 15-mile training ride. I could have stuck with my 7.8 mile neighborhood loop and ridden it twice, but as much as I like that route, the scenery is starting to get old. I wanted to try something different. The problem with other nearby routes, though, was that I had to train during rush hour, and most of the roads around my house are busy. When the route gets further than 5-6 miles past my house, the bike lanes start to disappear, so finding a 15-mile loop I could safely do from home in minimal traffic was a challenge. Finally, Kevin suggested just packing my bike and equipment in the car, driving out to Walter E. Long Park after work, and biking the Danskin course again. We even figured out a four-mile loop I could add on right after finishing the course, making the total distance about 15.5 miles. So I filled my water bottles, put my bike in the car, packed my cycling clothes, and printed out some maps for the next day.

When I got to Walter E. Long Park, it was about 4:30, and kind of hot out. My bike thermometer read 92 degrees. I pumped up my bike tires, taped some Gu to the bike’s top tube, put on sunscreen, and made sure both my water bottles were full before heading out to ride.

Even though the winds were very light (S-SE, about 4-5mph), the ride was just as tough and hilly as I remembered. I was prepared this time, though, and made sure to use my granny gears, shifting as efficiently as I could and spinning as much as possible to avoid hurting my knees. I also made sure to drink as much water as I could, since I need to get used to that for the race. I was trying not to push my speed today, so I didn’t check my cyclecomputer until I reached the end of the first 11.1 mile loop back to my car. When I stopped and looked at my time and average speed, I was surprised. I’d managed to ride the course in 40:55, with an average speed of about 16.3mph. If I could manage that during the Danskin, I’d be really happy. It was a huge confidence-booster.

I turned the bike around and finished my ride with the 4 mile loop at a nice, easy pace, cooling down. When I was about a mile from my car, just as I was eating a Vanilla Gu (which tasted like caramel), two large dogs started barking and running towards me, into the street. There were a few oncoming cars, so I’m surprised they didn’t get hit. I heard their owner calling them back, and they finally left me alone.

I’ve been stumped for several rides now about what to do with the empty Gu packet after eating it. In previous rides, I’ve just held the packet in my hand until the ride was over. This time, I decided to experiment with taping the packet back onto the top tube while riding. It seemed to work well, but when I got back to the car, I noticed a bunch of leftover Gu had dripped onto my downtube, making a sticky mess. So I’m still stumped about what to do with the empty packet.

Run, Swim

2009-05-19T08:00:00.000-07:00

Since Kevin is coming over tonight, I wanted to get my 30-minute run over with early in the day, so I set my alarm for 5 a.m. and planned to run first thing in the morning. It wasn’t too hard to get out of bed early, and the morning temperatures were unusually cool and crisp for late May, perfect for running. I still wasn’t thrilled, since running is my least favorite of the three triathlon sports. Still, it was a pleasant run, and I managed to avoid IT band problems by making sure to stretch and warm up really well.

Over my lunch break, I swam laps at Big Stacy Pool. The goal was to work on technique, trying to keep my feet from dropping, to roll my body more, and to keep my elbows high and close to my sides on recovery. I’ve got no idea if the technique changes are working or not. By the end of the workout, it’s always technique be damned, I just want to thrash my way through the rest of it without drowning. Kind of like the swim part of the triathlon will be, I imagine.

After swimming, I went back to work with wet hair and big eye hickies from my goggles.

My swim times seem to be getting incrementally faster – I’ve been dropping 1-2 seconds from my 100m pace every session or so. If this keeps up, by the time of the race, I’ll be swimming a comfortable 2:16 pace. (Yeah, probably not…but a girl can dream.)

Timed Open-Water Swim

2009-05-17T07:56:00.000-07:00

I had an open water swim clinic today, followed by a timed 750m swim. As we lined up to check in, I found myself eyeing the other participants and getting nervous. A lot of them were there with friends and seemed really at ease, like they knew what they were doing. One lady had a Danskin 2008 t-shirt on, so she’d obviously done a triathlon before. The woman at the check-in station bodymarked us, writing our number on the back of each hand and, if we weren’t wearing a wetsuit (most of us weren’t), on our left shoulder with a big black marker. I was number 20.

After checking in, we walked down to the pier by the lake and waited around for the class to start. There were maybe 30-40 of us, mostly women, but a few men, too. When the instructors asked us who had done a triathlon before, about 90% of the people there raised their hands. I was quickly realizing I wasn’t in a group of beginners, and was feeling nervous and a little intimidated. One of the instructors, Sandy, was a 3-time Olympic gold medalist in swimming, and the other instructor was her husband Keith, a swim coach and sports psychologist who’d participated in many races before. Both of them were really nice. They explained a little about good swimming technique, then about techniques specific to open water, especially how to sight.

Keith said, at one point, “by now, you should all be comfortable in the water. If you’re not, you shouldn’t be participating in an open-water race.” Fair enough. I think I’ve reached the point where I’m comfortable in water. The part that scares me, though, is getting knocked around by other swimmers while in the water. Before I could ask him about that, someone else brought it up. He told us that it was perfectly fine to start on the edges of the swim crowd or 10 seconds later than everyone else if we didn’t want to run into other people. That was reassuring.

After the discussion, Sandy got in the water and demonstrated how to sight. We all then got in the water with her to practice. As I swam my first length between buoys, Keith yelled out something to me. I stopped, and he explained that I needed to look less to the side and more in front of me while sighting. I tried it again, and he said it looked good that time.

After sighting practice, we all lined up at the starting buoy for the timed swim. Most people were swimming the 750m distance, but a few people were swimming 250m or 500m distances. We were all starting together, though. The 750m swim was a counter-clockwise loop around the perimeter of Quarry Lake, passing to the right of 5 main orange buoys on platforms. I positioned myself on the far right edge of the line of people to try and avoid getting smacked by someone in the water.

The starting buzzer went off, and we began swimming. While it was crowded at first, it wasn’t too hard to keep out of everyone’s way and follow the feet of the person in front of me, which was a relief. I swam along in a big pack heading for the first buoy, and everything was going really well until somewhere between the first and second buoys, probably 100-150m into the swim. Suddenly, the big pack I’d been swimming with started to break up and pull ahead of me. At the same time, my normal breathing pattern started to fall apart – instead of breathing every three strokes, bilaterally, like I usually do, I was gasping for breath every other stroke. I realized I’d been so focused on following the pack that I’d started too fast, and now I needed to slow down and find my own pace. Meanwhile, I looked to the right and saw I was starting to get passed by breaststrokers and backstrokers. I then looked to my left and saw the kayaker, maybe 20m away, watching me. I choked on a mouthful of water, almost panicked, and realized that wouldn’t be a good idea. So I calmed down and started swimming again, settling down to the task of finding my own pace and sighting buoys.

About halfway through the swim, which seemed to be taking forever, I remember thinking, “this kind of sucks.” It seemed like everyone had passed me and I was all alone in the lake. But I just kept my pace, trying to relax and focus on my technique, which had completely fallen apart during the first half of the swim.

Sighting went well until about 10 ft from the last small buoy in the line of buoys near the dock, when I suddenly realized I was about to swim to the left of it instead of the right, like we were supposed to. I hurriedly changed direction and swam around to the right. Whew.

I could finally see the edge of the dock, which was the stopping point of the swim. I sighted on it and made it to the end with no problem.

After climbing the ladder onto the dock, I felt pretty good, not breathing hard at all, but my triceps ached. Positive I’d reached a record low for my swimming times, I walked over to the person recording times and asked her for mine.

“15:38.”

Holy crap, you have to be kidding. For me, that was fast. I looked at the list, and saw at least 20 people who’d finished ahead of me – the person who’d finished in the shortest time had taken between 9-10 minutes. (Come to think of it, I’m not sure if they’d been swimming the 750m distance or not.)

I sat around on the dock, dried off, and rested, watching more people trickle in. A lot of them were going to be participating in Danskin. There was a group of maybe 4-5 who looked like they were friends, all standing around and comparing times. One of them had taken 32 minutes to swim the 750m, so I didn’t feel too badly. And at least now I know I can do an open-water swim with a crowd of other people and survive. If I don't try to keep pace with all of them.

***

When talking about the swim afterwards, Kevin and I figured that the most likely reason for my short swim time was an inaccurately measured course, and possibly a slight speed increase on my part due to adrenaline. He used Gmaps-ped to try and get a decent estimate of the actual course distance, and figured it could be anything from 620-700m, but it would be hard for it to come out to 750m. To do that, you’d have to swim along the very edge of the quarry, right against the shore.

Kevin came up with some pace vs. distance estimates based on my 15:38 time, which looked like this:

750m: 2:05 sec/100m (16:40 800m)
700m: 2:14 sec/100m (17:52 800m)
650m: 2:22 sec/100m (19:15 800m)

My fastest pool swims to date have been at a 2:27 pace, so for those three options, the most believable distance for the swim course is about 650m.

Even though I was hoping to use the timed open-water swim to get a good idea of what my Danskin swim time would be, the experience wasn’t a waste. Now I can say:

1. I’ve experienced what it’s like to swim with a group of other people, which has greatly decreased my fear of getting hit during a race. It’s increased my confidence as well as shown me what to expect in a group swim/race situation.
2. I’m much more aware of the pacing issue when swimming with a group. I need to work on recognizing how fast I can push my speed without going anaerobic.
3. I’ve gained experience sighting, and know I can navigate my way through an OWS course. I know I can correct my course when I’ve almost missed a buoy.
4. I know I can go anaerobic, start to panic, and recover my composure, going on to finish the complete distance of the swim at my own pace.

Overall, I think the experience has made me more comfortable and confident about swimming in an open-water race situation, which is going to help me a lot on race day.

Easy on the Knees

2009-05-16T07:52:00.000-07:00

The bike was really fun today. Kevin and I started in the early morning, around 7:50, since it was threatening to rain later that day. He was going to head home (a 37 mile trip), and I was going to follow him for the first 10 miles, then turn around. Since my knees have been bothering me on the bike for the past week, I decided not to push speed, but to take it easy and see if that helped. For the first 10 miles, we averaged about 15 mph. After leaving Kevin and turning around, though, I couldn’t help picking up speed and finishing the ride with a total average of 15.4 mph. Somewhere on Brody, as I zipped along, I felt so good I started to sing:

“I like to go fast! I like to go fast!
The feel of the wind on my face is a blast!”

Hehe. So true.

And on the plus side, my knees didn’t bother me after the ride, so the decrease in speed helped. My biggest goal right now is to not get injured before (or during) the race.

After the bike ride, I changed into walking clothes, grabbed my iPod, and headed out the door for a 30-minute cool-down/recovery walk, hoping to finish before the rain started. I made it with an hour to spare. Overall, a very nice training day.

800m in Under Twenty Minutes

2009-05-15T07:50:00.000-07:00

I really focused on swimming technique again today, experimenting with swimming long - extending my reach and stretching out fully with every stroke. It continues to help. I knocked another 8 seconds off of my projected 800m time: I’m now down to a sub-20-minute half-mile (19:56). Well, barely. But it’s progress.

The Last Brick. YEAH.

2009-05-14T07:47:00.000-07:00

Today was the last Brick session, and I’m glad they’re done with. Man, Bricks are hard. Since I can only do them in the late afternoon, right after work, they’ve been at the hottest, windiest, and most humid time of day. Today was particularly bad; muggy, with a high in the low 90s and a 15mph S-SE headwind. I keep telling myself it’s good preparation for race conditions. They still kind of suck. Especially since I can’t help going into racing mode, riding and running as fast as I can. Like a maniac, actually. I kind of scare myself.

Kevin was a big help, as usual. We started off in the living room, with me changing into my swimsuit, then packing my transition bag, filling water bottles with water and Gatorade, and taping a Gu packet to the bike, as if I was getting ready for the actual race. Bricks are a good opportunity to practice transitions, so I’ve been taking advantage of that every week I’ve had one.

We went out to the front yard, and I set up my bike with transition equipment next to it on the left, just like it will be on race day. First the towel, folded into quarters, with a final fold at the bottom to wipe my feet on after the swim. On top of that, the bike shoes, with rolled, powdered socks stuffed into them. Then, the bike helmet, facing the right direction, with the straps folded out; then the bandana, also facing just the right direction, spread inside the helmet; and finally, the running shorts on top of all of that. Next to the bike shoes went the elastic race belt, and on top of that, the running shoes, with their cordlock’d laces. A Gu packet was already taped to the top tube of the bike with masking tape. I’d spread Bodyglide on my thighs and the front of the bike saddle. The water bottles were already on the bike - the front water bottle contained half-strength Gatorade, and the rear bottle plain water. Even though the Gatorade had upset my stomach the week before and almost made me throw up while riding, I wanted to give it another try, with a different flavor and more dilute concentration.

I tucked my goggles and swim cap into the left shoulder strap of my swim suit, walked over to the front lawn, and Kevin sprayed me down with the hose. I put on my swim cap and goggles. And then, it began.
As Kevin started his watch timer, I jogged over to the “transition zone” while ripping off my goggles and swim cap. I wiped my feet on the towel, then tried to pull on the running shorts over my wet swimsuit. As usual, they stuck to my skin while I pulled them on. Then, I put on the bandana, the helmet, fastened the helmet, rolled the socks onto my feet, and strapped my feet into the bike shoes. I grabbed the bike and jogged with it to the “transition exit” (front of the driveway) and the “mount zone” (edge of the street next to the driveway). Then stood still while mounting the bike, chickening out on trying a running bike mount, which was probably for the best. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Kevin get on his bike to follow me. And then, we were off.

My favorite neighborhood ride is a 7.8 mile loop which I can finish in just under 30 minutes, so that’s what we did. On the first 2-mile stretch of road, we got up to a pretty good speed, riding with a nice tailwind. I love going fast. Now that I’ve got the slick tires on my touring bike, I can go even faster. In fact, over the past week, I’ve been passing other cyclists for the first time in my life. About a mile into the ride, we were quickly approaching one such unsuspecting cyclist, cruising along happily on his mountain bike. Oh, good…for the race, I’d need to remember to yell, “On your left!” while passing people, so this was a convenient opportunity to practice. As I rapidly approached the guy, I barked, “On your left!” like a drill sergeant before buzzing by him. The poor guy was pretty startled – Kevin said he swerved pretty hard to the right as we passed. Now that I’m no longer possessed by berserker-like racing energy, I actually feel pretty bad about that.

Riding up the South Congress hill into a headwind was just as tough as usual, and I was pushing pretty hard. Unfortunately, I pushed a little too hard, and my right knee started to hurt. As we turned onto Ablanedo and out of the headwind, I ate the Espresso flavored Gu (pretty good, by the way – even better than the chocolate) and tried to drop my pace and spin a little. My calves were starting to cramp up, and I wanted them to stop cramping before getting off of the bike and trying to take off my shoes. The spinning worked, and my calves made it through T2.

I set off on the 10 minute run around my neighborhood, leaving Kevin to put away my bike in the garage. Since the route I take is a one-mile loop around my neighborhood, I can gauge my pace by how close I am to my doorstep when my watch hits 10 minutes. For the past two bricks, I’ve had to run all the way to the end of the street and back to my house to make the time; those runs were at a 9:00 min/mile pace. This time, I was a little slow, passing by the house at about 9:15 instead of 9:00. As I passed, I saw Kevin going into the house via the front door, and wondered what he was doing. When I’d made it back to the house after running down the street and back, he was nowhere in sight. I pounded on the front door and yelled his name, then walked around the driveway and down the street a little, waiting for him. This next part of the brick was a 20-minute walk, and he usually joins me, but I had no idea where he was. Just as I was about to give up and start the walk without him, he came out of the house, explaining that he’d forgotten to change into his walking shoes after the bike ride. I calmed down a little, but was pretty surprised at the drill-sergeant mode I’d gone into while looking for him. I’m really hoping I can relax and tone that down by race day.

We had a nice walk, but it was hot and muggy outside. Kevin said my face was really red, which is pretty typical for me when it’s hot. But the walk was a good cool-down. I’m wondering if the heat was the reason my running pace was so slow relative to the last few bricks.

While starting the run, I noticed that my legs didn’t have that heavy, wobbly feeling that had been most pronounced during my very first brick workout. They felt even better than they had the week before. I was still breathing pretty hard for the first 5-6 minutes off of the bike, though.

My paces and transition times for this Brick:

T1: 40 sec
Bike: 16.3 mph, 7.8 mile loop
T2: 40 sec
Run: ~9:15 min/mi

Transitions are getting faster. Yay!

Breakthrough!

2009-05-13T07:45:00.000-07:00

I had a breakthrough in my swimming today. A couple of days before, Kevin had talked about watching the swim director at his pool while she swam, and noticing that she seemed to stretch out, keep her forward arm extended for a while, and glide while swimming the crawl stroke. She’s an excellent swimmer – in fact, the swim he watched her do was a demonstration, right after she gave a presentation on her swims across the English Channel back in the 1970s.

After seeing the swim director’s presentation, Kevin mentioned practicing “stretching out” during his last swim workout, like he’d seen her do, but with limited success increasing his swim times. Since I figured it couldn’t hurt, I wanted to experiment with extending my reach and “stretching out” my body, too. I’d noticed that my forward arm was always bent on re-entry into the water, and wondered if straightening it and reaching forward more would help.

After two warm-up laps, I swam 1200m continuously while experimenting with technique: stretching my arms straight in front of me with each stroke, rotating my whole body instead of just my head while breathing, and trying to create the sensation of gliding through the water. I finished the workout with two cool-down laps, slow and easy, still focusing on technique.

And the technique changes worked! I dropped 1:25 off of my 800m time. My average 100m pace was now down from 2:41 (or slower) to 2:30, all in the space of one workout, just from experimenting with technique. Still a far cry from 2:00, but I was happy to see some progress.

Slow Run

2009-05-12T07:42:00.000-07:00

Today was HOT. And humid. I drove out to Big Stacy Park around 11:15, then ran on the roads around Travis Heights, which, just like the name suggests, have lots of hills. The hill on Travis Heights road in particular felt like it went on forever. I think we calculated the grade afterwards using G-maps…it was about 8%.

At the finish of my run, I jogged on the dirt path through Big Stacy Park, around the loop, and then across the grass in the middle of the loop a couple of times. That was my “cross-country” practice.

Overall, subtracting the 5 minutes of walking I warmed up with, I think I averaged about a 10:15 minute mile. It’s pretty much a given that I will not be breaking any speed records for the triathlon run.

Too Many Chihuahuas

2009-05-10T07:38:00.000-07:00

I procrastinated on my run today, so ended up doing it about mid-afternoon, when it was hot and humid. Actually, the whole day was kind of hot and humid, so the late start made no difference.

I wasn’t looking forward to the run. While swimming has grown on me over the past few weeks, and I’ve always liked cycling, the constant pounding on your joints from running really wears me down. You also can’t get up enough speed while running to create a cooling breeze, (well, at least I can’t,) so it’s easier for the heat to get to you than while swimming or cycling.

I decided to run in the neighborhoods around Peaceful Hill. Yes, Peaceful Hill really is a hill. I’ve learned over the years, with cycling and running, to watch out for any street name that includes the word “hill.” Or, for that matter, the words “summit”, “heights”, and “ridge”. But I needed to do some hill work, as well as some cross-country work, since the Danskin run course included both, and Peaceful Hill was a good road for that.

This time, I was going to try and avoid running by the house with the attack Chihuahua, but before I even reached the middle school where I was going to run on the track, I was chased by someone else’s Chihuahua! So much for avoiding dogs.

When I got to the middle school, I ran a few laps around the gravel track and then across the grass before heading back to the roads leading to Peaceful Hill. As I jogged my way up the hill, I was very glad the workout was almost over.

Speedy Bike

2009-05-09T07:35:00.000-07:00

Once again, I was reversing my run and bike days on the weekend so that I could join Kevin for the first part of his ride home. This time, we weren’t doing a lap on the veloway. Instead, I would ride with him out to the 7.5 mile point, where Hwy 1 turned into 45, and take the turnaround back onto northbound Hwy 1. The round-trip distance should come out to a little over 15 miles.

For this ride, I had slick tires on the bike, so once again I was pushing my speed to see how fast the bike could go. As we raced up Hwy 1 into a slight headwind, I found I was able to speed along at 18 or 19 mph on the smooth roads, which is fast for me. There was a group of three cyclists on the road ahead of us, and to my surprise, I found I was catching up pretty quickly to the woman lagging at the back of the group. I sped by her, Kevin right behind me, and realized that it was practically a first – I almost never pass another cyclist on the road, since I’m usually so slow.

When we hit the 7.5 mile mark, I yelled goodbye to Kevin and headed to the turnaround that would take me back to Hwy 1 Northbound. As I sped along by myself, spinning hard, an older, overweight gentleman on a nice road bike with disk wheels and aerobars passed me easily, not even breathing hard, his legs going at about half my cadence. It was very humbling.

After the ride, I changed clothes and put on my walking shoes, then had a nice 30-minute cool-down walk around the neighborhood.

When I checked my cyclecomputer after the ride, I was surprised to see that I’d averaged 16.4 mph over 15.7 miles – my fastest speed to date, and more than 1 mph faster than the week before while riding with the old, knobby tires. I think I may be going a little faster lately due to improved conditioning, but the slick tires really do help as well.

Open Water Swim

2009-05-08T20:26:00.000-07:00

Kevin and I swam at Mansfield Dam today. It was going to be my first real open water swim. In preparation, Kevin had bought some lightweight yellow braided polypropylene cord to attach to a noodle. He then attached the other end of the cord to a nylon belt around his waist, which would let him trail the noodle behind him as he followed me on the swim. This would be our emergency flotation device.

The water level in the swim cove was low, and so the park employee recommended we swim around the buoys that marked off the swim cove from the boating area. We didn’t know how many meters the buoys were spread across, so I decided to go by time instead of distance. Since it had taken me 32 minutes a couple of days before to swim 1200 meters in the pool, I decided we’d go for 32 minutes of swimming in clockwise circles around the line of buoys. There were five buoys – later, we looked them up on the g-maps satellite image, and estimated the distance from the first to the last buoy to be about 70 meters. So each circle around the buoy line was about 140 meters. I think we ended up doing 7 laps around the buoys.

This was my first real open water swim, if you don’t count Barton Springs. The water was really cloudy, so not being able to see made me a little nervous. It took maybe 200m of swimming to calm down and relax, getting into a good rhythm with my stroke, breathing, and sighting. The buoys made for good sighting practice.

People watching us must have thought we looked really odd. Imagine me swimming in front, sighting buoys as I went; Kevin drafting right behind me (and accidentally slapping my feet during the last two laps…that’s how I knew I was slowing down and getting tired); and the blue noodle trailing behind us. Pretty ridiculous, but it was still kind of fun. When we stopped after the last lap, I sat on the noodle so I didn’t have to tread water and got a nice rest.

The Third Brick Workout

2009-05-07T20:23:00.000-07:00

Kevin was busy, so this was the first brick I’d be doing by myself. Since my tires were new and I was still paranoid about pinch flats, I decided to ride the two-mile loop around my neighborhood four times for the cycling part of the brick, which would mean the farthest I’d be from home at any point would be about half a mile, in case I needed to walk the bike home. Not the prettiest scenery, but it beat a four-mile walk back home.

I’d been obsessively reading triathlon discussion groups on the internet all week, trying to pick up more tips to make transitions faster, so I had a few new things to try. Most of the new things I tried went really well...here's the rundown:

T1 = 51 seconds (same as last week's T1)
T2 = 43 seconds (last week's T2 = 1:12)

Cord locks on the shoelaces: I’d gone down to Joann’s Fabrics and Crafts and picked up a pair of cord locks, as well as some Velcro for my elastic number belt. The cord locks were definitely much easier and faster than tying my shoelaces during T2.

Rolling socks: I read on a triathlon training site today that you can roll the tops of your socks to make them easier to put on, and this seemed to work.

Gold bond powder in socks: This was another tip on making socks easier to put on. It seemed to work. It also dried out my feet after the "swim" (hose-down) so the socks/shoes were more comfortable.

Bodyglide on inner thighs and bicycle seat: I put the bodyglide on the bike saddle and on my thighs before starting, and had no problems with chafing this time.

New bike tires: My bike pace today was 16.2 mph over 7.6 miles - faster than my previous fastest pace of 15.8 mph over 7.8 miles. This could have been due to the change in route, or it could have been the tires. I noticed the most difference in going up hills - I seemed to maintain my momentum for a much longer time, so that I had to shift less often and pedal less hard. It was a nice change.

Not cutting the Gu packet before taping it to the bike: Worked fine. I had to pull a little harder to tear the Gu packet, but it ripped easily. I ate the Gu while riding, with no problems. The chocolate flavored Gu I tried this time tasted much better than the berry flavor from last week.

Gatorade: Near disaster. I almost threw up about 15 minutes into the bike ride thanks to this stuff. Blech. Too sweet, upset my stomach, and made my mouth feel grossly sticky. I'm now considering taking plain water and two gels instead of one so that I don't have to use a sports drink.

Velcro on the number belt: Aside from the cord locks on the shoelaces, this probably helped decrease my T2 time the most. I was able to grab the belt and head out of "transition," then put the belt on while running. Very easy.

No foot or calf cramps this time. I made sure to ease up on the bike during the last few minutes of the ride, so maybe that helped.

That heavy, wobbly feeling in my legs at the start of the run isn't nearly as bad as it was during the first brick two weeks ago. I feel like I'm getting used to the sensation of moving from biking to running, which I guess is the point.

This time, as I was starting T1, I looked up to see a neighbor (a different one from the week before) strolling down the sidewalk with her dog and her little boy. She just smiled and said hi as they walked past my house. Maybe running around on your front lawn in your bathing suit isn’t so unusual after all? It may be okay in front of my neighbors, but as much as I’d love to ditch my running shorts for the Danskin, I’m still not racing down Slaughter and Manchaca on the bike in nothing but my bathing suit.

Pool vs. Open Water

2009-05-06T20:21:00.000-07:00

Now that I was swimming up to 800m continuously per workout, I was curious to see how my swim times compared in a pool to those in open water.

I went to Big Stacy Pool on my lunch break. It was the first time I’d been there since they’d closed the pool a couple of weeks before for cleaning.

I started with one 60m lap, untimed. Then:

0-150m - 4:04
150-300m - 8:10 (4:05)
300-450m - 12:11 (4:00)
450-600m - 16:12 (4:01)
600-750m - 20:10 (3:57)
750-900m - 24:08 (3:58)
900-1050m - 28:08 (4:00)
1050-1200m - 32:12 (4:03)

Estimated 800m time: 21:28
Average 100m time: 2:41

So I’m a little faster in the pool than at Barton Springs, but not by much. This was also the first time I’ve swam 1200m continuously. My endurance in the pool is getting much better.

***

I spent some time this evening putting the new slick tires on my bike. They’d arrived at Jack and Adams on Monday, and I’d picked them up after work. The tire change went really smoothly, to my surprise. No pinch flats, even though I’m so paranoid I keep going out to the garage to check. I’m curious to see if the tires help increase my cycling speed at all. Maybe I’ll find out during the brick tomorrow.

Hill Practice

2009-05-05T20:20:00.000-07:00

I ran at work today during my lunch hour. Since I was sick of running in the neighborhoods east of I-35, which I’d done a lot of while training for the Capitol 10K, I decided to cross the I-35 underpass and jog out to Big Stacy Park and back. The run would cover roughly 3 miles. There were a lot of hills on the route, but the Danskin route will have hills, too, so I figured it would be good practice. And the neighborhood scenery around Big Stacy Park is really pretty, which always makes a run more enjoyable.

Attack Chihuahua

2009-05-03T20:18:00.000-07:00

The run today was only 40 minutes, but tiring. I did it around 2 in the afternoon, and it was hot and humid out. Other than the fact that I’d done three hours of yard work the day before, it may have been more difficult because I ran as much of it as I could "cross country." Since the Danskin running course is mostly cross-country, I’ve resolved to start running more on grass and dirt trails.

So today, wherever there was grass on the side of the road, I ran on grass. I ran around the elementary school track, which was thick pea gravel, then across the playground lawn. Then finished by running up Peaceful Hill from Dittmar to Ablanedo. Then more grass, to home.

Just after leaving the elementary school track, I was chased by a Chihuahua. Even when I turned around and yelled, “No!” at it, trying to get it to go away, it didn’t back off. I could hear the owner calling to it, but the dog wasn’t paying any attention to her, either. Finally, the dog turned around and went back home, and I managed to finish my run without getting chased by any more dogs.

My pace has returned to 10:30 miles, probably because of running on all that gravel and grass. Oh well. Good thing tomorrow is a rest day, since my legs are feeling it.

15-Mile Ride

2009-05-02T20:16:00.000-07:00

Kevin rode home from my house today, and I joined him as far as the veloway. My training schedule had a 40-minute run listed for Saturday and a 15-mile bike ride for Sunday, but I decided to run on Sunday instead so that Kevin and I could ride together.

We left my house around 7:30 a.m. As usual, he let me ride in front and set the pace. I was really enjoying pushing my speed lately, so I rode pretty hard, just to see how fast I could go. I didn’t have to worry about outpacing Kevin, since he’s a much stronger rider than I am.

When we got to the veloway, which is a 3-mile paved cycling course that a lot of Austin-area cyclists train on, we rode one lap around it before splitting up and going our separate ways. I pushed my speed all of the way home, and was pleased to see I’d averaged 15.3 mph, which is fast for me.

Sandbagged

2009-05-01T20:15:00.000-07:00

Kevin met me at Barton Springs after work so we could practice swimming in open water while sighting and drafting off of each other. He was worried he was going to slow me down, since we’d been comparing swim times from our pool swims, and his were 5-6 seconds per 100m slower than mine. By the time I got to Barton Springs, he was already there, and had warmed up in the water by swimming a lap. He was wearing these baggy blue swim trunks at first, but while I was warming up, he decided to go change into his red lycra shorts. We started off on our first lap with him drafting off of me and me practicing sighting, and everything was going fine. When we finished the first 400m, he turned to me and said, “Now you practice following me.” Not thinking I’d have a problem keeping up with him – his pool times were slower than mine, right? - we started swimming. Pretty soon, though, he outpaced me, and I lost him. What the heck…? I just kept swimming, finally making it to the far end of the pool, where I looked up to see him waiting maybe 30ft away.

So he says, “Where’d you go? I’ve been waiting here for about 45 seconds.”

I was not happy. We finished the last 200m, and I stood and fumed for a few minutes. Obviously, I’d been sandbagged. It didn’t help that I’d fumbled the lap button on my watch and didn’t have separate times for each pool length, or that my final 800m time was 23:30 – much slower than it had been a couple of days before.

When Kevin timed himself in the pool a couple of days later, wearing the lycra shorts instead of the baggy blue ones, he’d cut about 20 seconds off of his 100m pace, making his pace roughly 15 seconds faster than mine. That was all accomplished in a few minutes, just by changing his shorts. Which, coincidentally, he decided to do right before we swam together for the first time. That, and adrenaline on his part because he didn’t want to slow me down, explains why, after swimming for 200m, he’d been waiting for me for roughly 45 seconds. In retrospect, after he said, “Where have you been?...”, I should have made him go change back into the baggy blue shorts.

I Don't Want to Know What the Neighbors Thought

2009-04-30T20:13:00.000-07:00

This would be the first transition practice I’d done since the transition clinic. The goal was to practice both T1 and T2 as part of my second bike-to-run Brick. Kevin was going to be helping me with it, and we were ready. I had all of my gear packed in the black duffel bag I was going to use to carry my transition gear to the race, and my bike was leaning against my car, simulating a bike rack. Both bike bottles were already filled and on the bike, and a Gu packet was taped to the top tube. I was dressed in my swimsuit, and my goggles and swim cap were tucked into the left shoulder strap, like they’d taught us in the clinic the week before. One of my running shoes was threaded with a cordlock, but since we’d only had one cordlock, I’d have to hand-tie the other shoelace. I folded my towel, organized all of my gear on top of it, and we walked over to the garden hose, where Kevin sprayed me down with water. I put my swim cap and goggles on, and we were ready.

As I started my watch timer and jogged to the “transition zone” while ripping off my swim cap and goggles, I looked up to see the next-door neighbor and his two pre-adolescent boys sitting in their minivan, watching us. The clock was ticking, though, so I didn’t have time to wonder what the neighbors were thinking. I wiped my feet on the edge of the towel, pulled on my shorts, put on my bandana and bike helmet, then tried to tug my socks on over still-damp feet before slipping my feet into my bike shoes. I grabbed my bike, wheeled it out of the “transition zone” (a.k.a. around the car), and we began to ride.

The training plan said to ride for 30 minutes, so we rode my favorite neighborhood loop, which is just short of 8 miles. I was in full race mode, zipping along as fast as I could and really pushing hard. We finished the ride in just over 30 minutes and pulled up to my driveway for the start of T2.

Off goes the bike helmet.
Off go the bike shoes.
On goes the elastic number belt.
On go the running shoes.

As the bike shoes come off, I feel my left calf start to cramp. OW. I stretched it out while slipping on my running shoes, and thankfully it went away pretty quickly, but I hated to think about getting a cramp during the actual race.

For the Danskin, I wanted to use one of the tricks Tracy had shown us to tie my running shoes more quickly, since tying my shoes had really slowed me down in the transition clinic the week before. Since cordlocks were easier to find than an elastic lacing system like Yankz, cheaper, and Kevin already had one we could experiment with (but not two), I was going to give them a try. One of my shoes was laced with a cordlock, but I’d have to tie the other conventionally. During this T2 practice, my cordlock’d running shoe went on really quickly, but tying the shoelace of the other shoe seemed to take forever, especially since I always double-tie my shoes. Finally, I was ready to jog out of “transition” and start my run.

Just like the week before, I was breathing pretty hard at the start of the run, but the wobbly, heavy feeling in my legs wasn’t as bad as it had been during the previous week’s brick. I just kept running, trying not to go too fast, and by 5-6 minutes into it, my heart rate seemed to ease off.

Kevin was waiting for me in the driveway after I’d finished running, and he joined me for the 20-minute recovery walk. Walking felt really good after all of that racing around.

After we were done, I practiced tearing the Gu packet off of the bike, then ate it to see what the flavor was like. We’d cut the corners of the Gu packet to make tearing it easier, but unfortunately, it had torn a little more on its own after I’d taped it, and Gu had dripped onto my shifters and downtube, making a sticky mess. I’d wanted to practice tearing and eating it while riding, but Kevin talked me into waiting until we’d first tested how the tape held during a ride. The Gu packet ripped off the bike very easily. I didn’t know how I was supposed to get the stuff into my mouth, so I just squeezed the packet in my fist while sucking on the end. Then made a face, because the flavor (Tri-Berry, I think) tasted horrible – much too sweet. It went down very smoothly, though, and the flavor went away quickly when I chased it with water.

Here are my times for the second brick workout:

T1: 0:53
Bike: 15.8 mph, 7.8 miles
T2: 1:12
Run: 10 minutes at 9 min/mile
Walk: 20 minutes at ~15 min/mile

Barton Springs, Timed

2009-04-29T20:11:00.000-07:00

The second time I swam at Barton Springs, I timed it, just to see how it compared to swimming in a pool. I swam four lengths, or one half-mile (~800m), in 22:07 min:sec. (1:23/50 m, 2:46/100m pace). Here were the times:

Lap 1 (200m) = 5:17
Lap 2 (400m) = 5:47
Lap 3 (600m) = 5:35
Lap 4 (800m) = 5:26

I was pretty proud of this, until I found out how slow a 2:46/100m pace actually is in the swimming world. Most competitive swimmers can swim 100m in about 1:20-1:40. Basically, twice as fast as my average pace. And a decent, average swimmer can manage 100m in about 2 minutes. Yes, I am very, very slow in the water.

Riding the Bike Course, and the Transition Clinic

2009-04-26T20:07:00.000-07:00

Today was the day of my 12-mile training ride. Kevin and I were going out to Walter E. Long Park today to ride the Danskin bike course, then check out the lake the Danskin swim would be held in before walking a little bit of the cross-country running course.

We got to the park at around 11 a.m. The winds were strong, coming from the S-SE at about 15-20mph, so I was pretty nervous about how the ride would go. My time goal for the race was to ride the 11.5-mile course in a modest 50 minutes, and I wasn’t too confident that I’d be able to pull it off on my 23-year-old, steel-frame touring bike with the downtube shifters and fat, knobby tires. But we would see if it could be done.

We started off at a pretty good clip with a tailwind and a lot of nervous energy on my part. There were some rolling hills, but they didn’t seem too bad at this point, until about mile 4, when we took a right turn and started riding straight into a headwind. I was puffing and pedaling hard, really struggling to push the bike forward, and the effort was starting to get to me. Not only that, but Kevin had already ridden 17 miles that day to meet me at the course on his bike, and he was barely struggling at all. That made me mad, for some reason. I was weak. Weak! And my bike sucked. Kevin saw me puffing along and rode alongside me to try and help, giving me good advice that I didn’t have the energy to listen to. That’s when I started to vent. I told him this was all his fault, and I hated him (and took it back immediately, because I don’t hate Kevin – he is a sweetheart); then I said I hated my bike, which is true. In fact, I said, “I hate my bike” more than once. By the time we’d reached mile 10, a long, surprisingly steep hill, still riding straight into a headwind, I was yelling, “I’m not doing it. I’m not doing the triathlon. I quit!” Finally, we finished the course, and I looked down at my bike computer – 47:13, 11.1 miles, with an average speed of 14.1mph. So even on a course that brutal, it looked like I might meet my time goal for the race. There was hope after all.

***

After Kevin and I had finished checking out Decker Lake and walking a lot of the cross-country running course, Kevin rode his bike from Walter E. Long Park to downtown Austin, while I drove down to the Bicycle Sports Shop and then Jack and Adams to look at bike tires. I wanted to change out the heavy, wide tires I used for touring with skinnier slick tires that would hopefully be faster to ride with. The saleswoman and mechanic at Jack and Adams were really helpful, promptly coming up with a couple of slick tire options that would fit my bike. The tires would have to be ordered, but the race was so far out that it wasn’t a problem. I took down the information about the tires on one of the shop’s business cards so I could go home, check tire specs on the internet, and decide which ones I wanted.

After a quick lunch at a burger place, Kevin and I headed down to Runtex to attend a transition clinic put on by Trizones, a triathlon training group – the same one that ran the Danskin mentor program I’d signed up for. My mentor Eryn was going to be there, and so were Tracy, the person who’d taught the equipment clinic the week before, and Pam, the head of the mentor program. There were maybe 20-30 women there for the clinic, and most of them were going to be participating in the Danskin.

Tracy started the clinic by describing some of the details of how registration, race day set-up of the transition area, and transitions themselves would work. We would register, pick up our race packets, and set up our bikes in the transition area on the Saturday before the race. She told us to make sure we checked out the transition area really well while setting up our bikes, taking note of where the swim entrance, bike exit, bike entrance, and run exit were in relation to our bike’s rack position. If we wanted, we could attach a mylar balloon or brightly-colored swim cap to the rack as a way to locate our bikes quickly, but it was best to count racks (i.e. I’m two rows back, one row left from the swim entrance), or identify fixed landmarks, like trees, and remember where we were that way. She said it was up to us whether we wanted to rack our bikes facing forward, hooking the brake levers over the bar, or facing backwards, hooking the front of the saddle over, but just plan to put our equipment on the side of the bike we were used to walking with the bike on. She also said to make sure to under-inflate our tires by about 10% while the bikes were parked in the transition area all day Saturday, otherwise our tubes might expand and pop in the heat.

On the day of the race, we should try to get there really early to set up transition, since we’d have to take a shuttle bus from the parking lot to the race area. She said to get to the parking lot by 5:30 a.m. (ouch). When we set up our transition equipment next to our bikes, we’d have very little space to lay everything out – it should all fit on a small towel. On the towel, we should stack our equipment in order of what we were grabbing first. Bike gear should be closest or to the left, running gear behind it or to the right of it.

Here’s what we’d need to stack, in reverse order:

Hand towel or large towel folded into fourths (everything would go on top of this). We could also fold the very end of the towel over so we’d have something to wipe our feet on after the swim.

To the left side:

• Biking shoes
• Socks stuffed into biking shoes (if we plan on wearing socks – many people don’t)
• Shorts (if we’re wearing them)
• Bike helmet (facing in the direction you want it when you put it on, with straps folded out. Some people put their helmet with sunglasses tucked inside onto their bike’s aerobars. Some of us don’t have aerobars.)
• Red bandana inside the bike helmet (well, this is just me. I can’t cycle or run without my bandana to keep the hair out of my eyes. Plus, it makes it easier for Kevin to pick me out of a crowd.)
To the right side or behind the bike gear:
• Race belt or running singlet with number attached
• Running shoes (on top of the race belt, so it doesn’t blow away.)

Also, we should make sure we have our water bottles filled and on the bike, have any nutritional supplements like sports gel taped to the bike or otherwise accessible, and bring a bike pump to top off our tires. We would also need a change of clothes for after the race. We wouldn’t be allowed back into transition until they’d re-opened it after everyone had finished the bike course, so we should bring a bag (like my fanny pack) to cart our change of clothes, food, sunscreen, and anything else we might need out of the transition area before the race started.

Tracy also showed us a couple of tricks we could use to make lacing our running shoes quicker. One was to pull the laces through cordlocks, then tie the ends of the laces off to the front of your shoes, and the other was to use an elastic lacing system, like Yankz.

Whew. That was a lot to remember.

After Tracy went over everything, we all got to practice our transitions. It was kind of fun, but a little confusing to try and remember everything…where was the bike exit again? Why didn’t I remember to take the bike helmet off before running? (Apparently this happens a lot, and people go running off down the course in their bike helmets. Hehe.)

I can tell I have a lot of work to do on transitions. No wonder it’s called “the fourth event” in a triathlon.

Swimming at Barton Springs

2009-04-24T20:05:00.000-07:00

My first swim at Barton Springs was untimed, and the purpose of it was to get used to swimming in open water, or at least to get used to swimming for long distances (200m or so) without a rest. I’m glad I didn’t time the swim, because I spent the whole first lap freaking out about a.) the fish and b.) the water weeds. It was also the first time I’d ever swam a full 800m, so it took some time to get over the panicky sensation when I realized I’d just swallowed a mouthful of water and the nearest wall to hang on to was still 20-30ft away. Pretty soon, though, I started to realize that the fish below me were lazily floating near the bottom, minding their own business, and weren’t going to bother me. They were actually kind of pretty, and fun to watch. The swim started to remind me of scuba diving, and so I was able to relax, finally, and enjoy it.

The First Brick Workout

2009-04-23T20:03:00.000-07:00

I was a little nervous today, since I was going to do my first brick workout.

What’s a brick? Well, triathlon is a unique sport because it involves transitioning from one activity to another pretty quickly – swimming to cycling, and then cycling to running. A brick workout is a workout that includes two activities – most commonly cycling and running – back to back, so that you can get used to the sensation of moving from one to the other. Moving from cycling to running is particularly challenging, since running and cycling both use your leg muscles, but in different ways. I’ve read that it’s called a “brick” because that’s how your legs feel when you try to run immediately after getting off of the bike.

This would be my first brick. Overall, I would be doing four of them – one each week for four weeks.
So, I was a little nervous about this first brick, a little excited, and actually a little curious to see what it would feel like, too. My legs have never felt like bricks before.

The training plan said to ride the bike continuously for 30 minutes, then walk for two, run for eight, and finish with a 20-minute brisk walk. Kevin was going to join me for the ride and the walk. (In his 20s, he ran, but after it started bothering his knees, he stopped and hasn’t run since. He’s also had plantar fasciitis in recent years, which doesn’t encourage him to start running again.)

We got on the bikes and headed out on the route to Akins High and back, which covered about 6 miles. By the time we’d made it back to my neighborhood, we still had at least 5 minutes of riding left, so we made a couple of loops around the neighborhood before pulling up to my driveway. I got off the bike, leaned it against the garage, and bent over to change into my running shoes, when both feet started to cramp at the same time. THAT was unexpected. I hopped around, and the cramps subsided pretty quickly as I put on my running shoes and headed off down the road.

I’d picked a one-mile loop for the 10-minute run portion of the brick, and dutifully started off walking the first two minutes, just like the training plan had said. I noticed two things: 1.) even just walking, I felt like I was exerting myself much harder than usual, and 2.) my legs felt wobbly and hard to control. Walking made the wobbly sensation really noticeable. Finally, after a minute, I gave up on the walking and moved into a slow jog, which felt much better. A minute later, I turned around to see Kevin pacing me on the bike – since I’d started off walking, he wasn’t sure what was going on. I explained the whole idea of the warm-up walk before the run, and he returned home to wait for me to finish running.

My first impression of running right off of the bike was that it felt awful. I was prepared for my legs to feel strange, but I wasn’t prepared for how hard my cardiovascular system would have to work because of the change in activity type. I did some reading later and found out that your body has to work extra hard to move blood from the cycling muscles to the running muscles, which is why it feels so bad. After about 5 minutes, though, my breathing eased, and it started to feel like a normal run. Kevin and I walked the last 20 minutes of the brick together, which felt much better than running.

So now I know – that’s what a brick feels like. At least I’ll be prepared for how it might feel during the race.

Sighting Practice

2009-04-22T20:01:00.000-07:00

I went to do my swim workout today with two goals in mind: to double the number of meters I was swimming in order to start building my endurance, and to practice sighting.

When a triathlete (or anyone else racing in open water) swims in a lake or the ocean, he or she needs to follow a line of buoys that mark out the swim course distance. The only problem is, in a pool, most people swim with their faces under water, following the easily-visible black line on the bottom of the lap lane. Since lakes and oceans don’t have lap lanes, a person swimming in open water needs to know how to sight, or look up every now and then, to locate buoys or other fixed landmarks so that they can navigate. If you don’t know how to sight, it’s really easy to swim off-course. And you can’t assume you can rely on following other swimmers during the race, either – they may be leading you to the other end of the lake instead of the finish line, for all you know.

So one of my goals for today was to practice sighting in the pool. After a warm-up, I’d swim my main set of 300m, then swim as many laps as I could while practicing sighting. The only problem was, I’d only read about sighting in books. At this stage, I had no idea how it was actually done. Did you look up before breathing or after? Or sight during a non-breathing stroke? How often? And how did it fit into breathing bilaterally? It was going to take some effort to learn.

My first few attempts at sighting ended with my stroke getting out of rhythm, my breathing getting messed up, and me swallowing lots of water. After I got the rhythm down, it was still awkward – every time I’d lift my head up to look forward at some landmark, like an orange cone or a diving board, it would throw me off balance in the water, and I’d sink. Learning how to sight was turning out to be a slow, discouraging process. I gave up after swimming 550m and called it a day, wondering how I was ever going to make it through an 800m open-water swim.

After doing some more reading, I learned that you’re not supposed to lift your head completely out of the water when you sight, and you’re not supposed to do it while taking a non-breathing stroke (both of which I’d been doing). Instead, about every 6-9 strokes, you just lift your head far enough so that your goggles are peeking above the water line, right before you turn your head to breathe. That minimizes how much you’ll throw yourself off balance, and keeps your sighting in rhythm with your breathing and stroke. It takes some practice. I’ll just have to keep working on it.

The Danskin Route Map

2009-04-22T19:59:00.000-07:00

I did some sleuthing online today, looking for a map of the Danskin triathlon running and cycling routes. Kevin did have a point – it’s hard to set a goal pace for a course you’ve never even seen.

While the Danskin-Sherox web page for the Austin event only said, “coming soon,” in the spot listing “route maps”, I found out that there was another local sprint triathlon put on by Trek, also held at Walter E. Long Park, that probably used the same swimming, cycling, and running routes as the Danskin. Since the Trek triathlon already had their maps of the course posted, I was able to download them off of the internet.

Based on the maps, it looked like most of the run course would be cross-country on meandering grassy trails in Walter E. Long Park, and the cycling course would be an 11.49 mile loop on the roads surrounding Decker Lake.

Since I had a 12-mile training ride coming up the following Sunday, I thought that would be a good day to drive out to Decker Lake and ride the bike course with Kevin. While there, he and I could scope out the lake and the running course, as well. So after talking with him, that’s what we tentatively planned to do.

Setting Some Goals

2009-04-21T19:56:00.000-07:00

Inspired by the thought of finishing the Danskin in under two hours, I wrote up some rough time goals. The goals weren’t pulled completely out of thin air – just partially. Based on my training and Capitol 10K times, I have decent pace estimates for running and cycling, I think. But since, to date, I haven’t actually swam more than 300m at a time, I’m a little less certain of my swim pace. Based on that one 300m pool swim at Dick Nichols, though, I’d guestimated I could swim 800m in about 20 minutes. So, excitedly, I wrote up some goals:

Swim goal: 20 min (2:30 pool pace)(standard swim paces are written in minutes per 100m)

Bike goal: 50 min (11.49 miles at ~14mph)

Run goal: 30 min (3.1 miles at 10:00 min/mile)(my math was a little off here, since this would take longer than 30 minutes)

Transition goal (both T1, the swim-to-bike, and T2, the bike-to-run, combined): 5 min

Total time goal: 1 hr 45 min

Excitedly, I e-mailed my goals to Kevin. He called me back.

“Do you think you can actually swim 800m in 20 minutes? That sounds kind of fast. Back when I was swimming regularly, I couldn’t swim 800m that fast.”

“Well, at Dick Nichols, I swam 300m in 7:38…”

“But 300m isn’t 800m. Your 800m time could be a lot slower, especially in open water. Plus, were you including the time you spent resting between laps? Were you pushing off the wall? (yes, no.) Both of those could affect your time.”

“But…”

“And what about the bike course? How long is it - is it hilly? Do you know the route?”

“No, but…”

“You may have run the Cap10K at a 9:56 pace, but do you think you’ll manage to run 5K even faster, after over an hour of swimming and cycling?”

Silence.

I got off the phone, feeling like someone had just pissed in my punchbowl. Or would that be, swimming pool.

Biking Downtown

2009-04-19T19:54:00.000-07:00

Kevin and I rode 24 miles round-trip from home today, in place of the 10-mile bike ride listed on my training program. We were heading downtown to run some errands, and then to attend an equipment clinic put on by Trizones, a triathlon training group. The clinic was at a local bike shop, Jack and Adams, that specialized in triathlons, so we were expecting there to be some sales pitching involved.

It turned out that there were only five people at the clinic, aside from the instructor, Tracy. So a lot of other people were probably expecting it to be a sales pitch, too. It wasn’t bad, though. Tracy had a bag full of her own equipment to show us. She passed out an equipment list, going down it item by item and explaining what was absolutely necessary and what was just nice to have. She was really good about stressing that we didn’t need all of this stuff, and that it had taken her several years to put together her whole collection of equipment. I took some notes, and we asked lots of questions.

After the clinic, Tracy stayed and chatted with us about training, triathlons, and cycling. We talked about strategizing for the bike portion of the Danskin, and I told her I was taking one water bottle of Gatorade and one bottle of water with me for the ride. She said I should also plan to tape a sports gel packet to my bike’s top tube and, timing-wise, eat it halfway through the ride, if I was planning to finish in under two hours. Hearing that is when I got excited – if my training times so far were anything to go by, I knew I had a good chance of finishing the race in under two hours. I’m not sure how much under - 10, 15 minutes? Was there something I wasn’t considering that would slow me down…could I really finish that fast? I don’t know. But yeah, I was going to try.

One of my worries was the bike. My bike is an old, steel-frame touring bike with very heavy, wide, knobby tires. I didn’t think I was going to be able to ride very fast with it, but it’s hard to say, since Kevin rides an old bike and carries packs with him, and is still able to average 16mph over 30+ miles of hilly terrain. His opinion is that conditioning matters more than the kind of bike. We asked Tracy how much of a difference the bike makes – how much faster would a road bike be than a hybrid? She thought a road bike could add roughly 3mph to someone’s cycling speed. I wish I had the chance to test that, but for now, I’m going to stick with my old bike for the Danskin. It’s only my first triathlon, after all, and who knows if there will even be a second one for me.

Swim, Walk

2009-04-16T19:52:00.000-07:00

Today, I raced out to Dick Nichols Pool during my lunch break in order to get in a swim workout before it started to rain. I was beginning to feel obsessive about making sure my workouts got done.

It was another 300m swim day. I’ve been trying to get comfortable breathing bilaterally (once every three strokes, first to my left, then to my right) and looking straight down in the pool instead of craning my neck to keep my face out of the water, so I continued working on that today. I’d read that bilateral breathing was important, since it helped you swim in a straight line, kept you from developing your muscles unevenly, and helped you avoid swallowing water splashed in your face by people swimming to one side of you or the other.

After work, Kevin and I walked for 30 minutes around my neighborhood. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to walk immediately after the swim or not, but the training program didn’t say, and today, I just hadn’t had time, anyway. For a 92-page document, the training plan is surprisingly short on detail. Regardless, I keep muddling through it, figuring that making some minor training mistakes is better than not training at all.

Swim, Run

2009-04-14T19:47:00.000-07:00

Today’s workout was a 300m swim followed by a 20-minute run. Since Big Stacey Pool was closed for cleaning, I went to Dick Nichols Park after work instead. The pool and park were only 15 minute's drive from my house.

I soon noticed that the park had a one-mile paved fitness path that I could use for my run, and a 25 meter heated pool with 10 lap lanes and a separate recreational swim section.

I did the swim portion of my workout first. I swam 12 laps (300m) at an easy pace, resting as little as possible between each lap, and timed myself with my watch, just to see how I was doing on speed. 7 minutes, 38 seconds. Hm. According to the swim pace chart on trinewbies.com, if I can maintain that pace during the triathlon (in open water amongst a crowd of other thrashing swimmers), I'll finish the swim in about 20 minutes. Unless I'm mistaken about my pace, the swim may just be my fastest event. How pathetic, considering I hate swimming. Though I can tell I'm getting more comfortable with the breathing, not panicking as much and not inhaling as much water.

After the swim, I pulled my running shorts on over my swimsuit, put on my running shoes and bandana, and headed out to the fitness path for a five-minute walking warm-up, followed by 15 minutes of jogging. I was surprised at how tired I felt after less than 10 minutes of swimming, and how slowly I seemed to be running my two laps around the fitness path. It ended up taking maybe 22-23 minutes instead of 20.

Biking Around Kevin's Neighborhood

2009-04-12T19:45:00.000-07:00

I was at Kevin’s house this weekend and had to do a 10-mile training ride, so he and I rode out about mid-morning in nice, mild, mid-spring weather – sunny, but not too hot. We started on neighborhood roads I’ve ridden before through the country club section of town near his house, which are mostly flat, shaded by big trees, and sheltered from the wind. After reaching a convenient turn-around point 4 miles from Kevin’s driveway, right before having to cross a busy street, we headed back. When we reached the main road turning off towards Kevin’s house, we still had another couple of miles to ride, so we kept going straight, planning to do a one-mile clockwise loop on the roads around his house a couple of times before finishing. The start of the loop was slightly uphill and straight into a headwind, and I could barely get the bike to go faster than 11mph. Frustrated, I started to cuss both the headwind and my bike. Kevin said,

“So do you think they’ll have fans on the Danskin course blowing behind you to counter the headwinds?”

He had a good point.

First Swim Workout

2009-03-31T19:41:00.000-07:00

As it turned out, my training for the Danskin started on a Tuesday, two days after running the Capitol 10K. And the very first workout day involved a short, 15-minute run and a 200m swim. The Monday night before the workout, I went to the local sporting goods store to get equipped with goggles, a swim cap, and a bathing suit. Kevin, who’d done some swimming before, told me that the most important feature of goggles was that they fit without leaking. The way to test the fit was to press them against your face and see if the suction made them stick for at least a second. I must have gone through at least 10 pairs of goggles before settling on a pair I was happy with. Finding a bathing suit was much easier – I only had to try on two before finding one that fit.

On my lunch hour, I drove down to the local pool to find out where it was and check out the swimming and showering facilities. It’s only a mile away from where I work, so it’s easy to get to during my lunch break or right after work, making it a convenient location to swim. After locating the tiny parking lot and figuring out how to park, I walked around the chain link fence surrounding the pool, found the entrance gates, and peered in to look. There were three lap lanes on one side of the pool, and the other side was open for recreational swimming. Even though it was only 11:30 a.m, there were several people already swimming. I located the shower facilities, made note that they had a lifeguard on duty, then decided to come back after work at 4:00 and swim then, since maybe it would be less crowded in the afternoon. In the meantime, I used the rest of my lunch break to do my 15 minute run on the dirt trails around the park.
When I arrived back at the pool a little after 4, the local high school had just let out for the day, and the pool was swamped with kids. Fortunately, most of them were either sunbathing or swimming in the recreational end, so I was able to find a lap to share with one of the other lap swimmers.

According to my training schedule, I was only supposed to swim 200m today. The pool was 100ft in length, or roughly 30m, so 200m would be 3.5 laps.

I got in the pool at the shallow end, and was happy to note the water was warm. It took a while of fussing with the goggles to convince myself they didn’t leak, but they fit pretty well. And then I tried my first lap. After swimming one length of the pool, I grabbed the wall, huffing and puffing, and had to wait maybe 10-15 seconds before swimming the next one. It was going to take some work to get used to breathing and not swallowing water or getting it up my nose while swimming.

After repeating the “swim-swallow water-choke-gasp-hang on the edge of the pool” routine six more times, the workout was over. I hadn’t timed it, but after checking my watch figured it had taken less than 10 minutes, which surprised me. For some reason, I thought it would take much longer to swim 200m.

The Capitol 10K

2009-03-29T19:38:00.000-07:00

After 9 weeks of preparation, following yet another training plan I’d found on the internet, I ran in the Capitol 10K for the first time. After my initial training runs, which were at an 11-12 min/mile pace, I’d quickly decided that my goal was to just finish – forget finishing in an hour. So I ran the race just for fun, and it was a blast.

The Capitol 10K is a huge race that attracts over 10,000 runners in Austin every year. There were bands playing just about every mile of the race, random strangers cheering on the side of the road, and people running in costume. Near Town Lake, there was a sprinkler set up that everyone could run through to cool off. Crushed cups littered the ground around the water stations like confetti left after a party. It was like one huge carnival. And to top it off, my boyfriend Kevin was waiting by the side of the road a half mile from the finish line. I was wearing my red bandana so he could pick me out of the crowd, and he saw me and yelled my name as I ran by. There’s nothing like having your own personal cheering section.

Just because I was running “for fun” didn’t mean I didn’t start my watch timer for the race. As I crossed the finish line, having sprinted the last half-mile and feeling great, I stopped the timer on my watch and looked at it. 1:01:39. Very close to finishing in an hour, with a 9:56 pace - not bad for my first 10K. Maybe there was hope for my finishing a triathlon, too.

So This is How it Starts...

2009-03-17T19:37:00.000-07:00

Now that I’d decided to participate in the Danskin Triathlon, there were a couple of things I had to do. First, I needed to register. Then, I had to find myself a training plan. Both things were pretty easy to do on the internet.

I found an 11-week training program on Trinewbies.com, which dovetailed nicely, training- and timing-wise, with the 10K training plan that I was about to finish. It had a one-page diagram of the training schedule with 92 pages of explanation following it. Never having done a triathlon before, I had no idea if the training schedule was any good or not. But hey, it was almost exactly the right length, since the Danskin was on June 7th, and it was much better than having no training plan at all.

Doing the Danskin

2009-03-16T19:34:00.000-07:00

The whole thing started in mid-March, as I was getting ready to run my first 10K. My training schedule for the 10K was winding down and the race would soon be here and gone, and I was wondering what I wanted to do next. A friend of mine had done the Danskin Triathlon the year before and really enjoyed it, and I’ve had other friends who’ve done it and found it to be a good experience as well. In the past, when I’d thought about doing a triathlon, there were two things that always put me off: The fact that there was swimming involved, and the fact that there were crazy, ultra-distances involved. But the Danskin is what’s known as a Sprint triathlon, with an 800m (half-mile) swim, a ~19K (11.49mi) bike ride, and a 5K (3.1mi) run. Actually, my initial perception of triathlons was shaped by growing up and seeing the first Ironman races on television, so when I talked to a friend who’d done the Danskin and heard what distances were involved, I remember thinking, “That’s not a REAL triathlon.” But I also remember thinking that it was a triathlon I might be capable of doing.

I still wasn’t sure if I’d want to do it, though. After all, it involved an open-water swim. And I am not a swimmer. When I was in college, in preparation for becoming a counselor at a kid’s camp one summer, I took a water rescue class. At the end of the class, the teacher handed me my certificate, but then she looked me in the eye and said, “I’m giving you the certificate, but I don’t want you to ever try and rescue anyone.” That sums up how bad a swimmer I am.

I think the most swimming I’ve done since that class in college was the brief 200yd swim required to get my scuba diving certification. Now, if I decided to do the Danskin, I’d have to somehow work my way up to a continuous 800m swim in Decker Lake. But at least it sounded more do-able than a continuous 2.4 mile swim in the rough seas near Kona.

While trying to decide, I talked to a friend of mine whose wife had raced in the Danskin the year before, grilling him with all sorts of questions. What if you have trouble during the swim? (Lots of women don’t swim well, so the water is full of Swim Angels offering you noodles and kayakers waiting to keep you from drowning.) Do you need a wetsuit? (No, the water is warm.) Are most of the women riding fancy road bikes? (No, only maybe a third of them.) Finally, he looked at me and said,

“Most of the women are just there to see if they can do it.”

That decided it for me. I was in.