Kansas 5150 Triathlon (duathlon)

Finals are over and my brain can officially shut off. Heck to the yeah!

After an extremely hectic couple of weeks following my early season heroics at Collegiate Nationals and St. Anthony’s, I headed down to Lawrence, Kansas for the Olympic distance event at Lake Clinton Park. My coach and I had decided that although this race would present descent competition and a challenging course, it had to be lower on the priority list when considering my race schedule as a whole. So, I went into the race with a sizeable block of training in the legs and planned to take the “play it by ear approach.” Below is the recap of the wet-n’-wild weekend in the great state of Kansas.

After wrapping up my last two exams on Wednesday night, I was finally able to focus on getting organized for the race, preparing a few meals and getting in some high quality, undistracted training sessions (check out Strava!). I spent all of Thursday training some more, cooking more food and trying to distract myself in order to stay up past 9:00 PM in order to pick up my Dad at the Megabus stop at 10:30 who was meeting me in Iowa City and then coming to the race. After a quick jump five in celebration that I didn’t fall asleep on the couch, we were off to bed.

We woke up relatively early on Friday morning to get in a quick run and some hefty breakfast consuming/ Giro d’Italia watching. We loaded up the car and then hit the road for the 5-hour drive to Kansas City, MO where we were staying. Unfortunately, Lawrence is also the home to the University of Kansas who happened to have their graduation the same weekend. So, this left us with the only reasonable hotel option 1 hour away in the portion of Kansas City where you wouldn't want to raise your family.

We checked into our Holiday Inn Express, which was surprisingly spacious and pleasant given the surroundings. I immediately got onto the bike for a 27-mile ride through the many neighborhoods of South Kansas City. Along this out and back route, I saw: a gun lying in a ditch on the side of the road, a car getting robbed and a rabbi in a pimped out Escalade with hydraulics. Despite the distractions, I felt really good and the short efforts I added throughout the ride felt pretty easy considering the power I was putting out. I rolled back into the hotel, stretched, showered and we spent the rest of the night eating my pre-cooked food, foam rolling and watching some Michael Moore documentary about capitalism which got my attention but simultaneously got me somewhat angry about the world.

Hotel food done right 

 

STOP MAKING ME SO IRRITABLE MICAHEL 

We woke up Saturday morning to another delicious hotel-room breakfast spread and then packed up the car with training gear and lunch essentials. We got into Lawrence and after some short course inspecting, we found a small beach were some other athletes were swimming. So, I donned the wetsuit and hopped in the water for a choppy 1-mile swim.

Breakin' the rules all day 

Continued my streak of ripping my wetsuit 2x per swim while putting it on! 

After almost getting reeled in by angry fisherman and run over by speedboats, I changed into my cycling kit and went out for a full loop of the bike course. I had somewhat of a longer workout the day before the race, and really felt that riding the entire course gave me the confidence to tackle each hill and take every corner with a lot more confidence. After the bike, I put on the run shoes and similarly went out for a one 5k loop of the run course (plus a little extra), feeling really confident about how to run the hills and stay out of the wind as best as possible.

Hot, hilly and windy 

I took a quick dip in the cold lake and then we got back into the car for lunch, packet pickup, and a quick stop at the grocery store and then back to the hotel to hang out for the rest of the evening.

After another pre-made hotel dinner and some more foam rolling, Alex arrived around 7:30 PM. He had come to Kansas City from Des Moines and would be tagging along with us for the race and a ride back home. We spent the rest of the night hanging out and relaxing before our 3:40 AM wake up call and drive to Lawrence.

While I researched brunch places for after the race.... 

Steve (successfully) opened a bottle of wine with a coat hanger 

The alarm went off and we all sleepily stumbled around the room making breakfast and packing up the rest of our things. Dad decided it would probably be a good idea to look out the window and grimly announced the forecast- lightning, thunder and torrential downpour. Perfect racing weather! 

Looks wet out there dude. 

As you can see, Alex and I were quite chatty in the morning after having a look outside for ourselves  

We loaded up the car, threw the bikes on the back and hit the road to Lawrence around 4:30 AM. After getting slightly lost, we got to the race site around 5:30 AM just as the rain seemed to slightly back off.

Trying to ensure the wind wouldn't catch our discs and blow the bikes off the back 

I got onto my bike right away, put in a short warm up with a few efforts and then rolled down to the transition area. I set up my things, got marked, picked up my chip and started to mentally prepare for the race. Then, just as we thought we were in the clear… more lightning, thunder and hard, cold rain. The athletes found shelter where possible and anxiously awaited an announcement from the race director as to what was going to be done. I heard everything from “the race will go on as planned” to “we are cancelling it completely.” Either way, around 6:30 AM, Alex and I decided it was now or never to get in a run warm up if the race were to somehow start on time at 7:30. So we jogged around for a bit, essentially running the entire 5k out and back and made our way back to the transition area. I tried to stay warm as best as possible, still waiting on any type of decision.

 

Coming in from the bike warm up,

Almost certain the swim was cancelled, I still put on my wetsuit for warmth 

Finally, around 7:45, the race director came onto the loud speaker and announced that they were in fact cancelling the swim and would be doing a bike-run duathlon instead. Athletes would line up in their bike gear and would be sent off in time-trial fashion every 3 seconds.

 

SO flippin' cold 

Well, this sure put a damper in my plans of racing a triathlon, but I tried to simply focus the factors that I could control. It was time to have a nice, hard training day in good ole’ Lawrence. I grabbed my bike, threw on my helmet and shoes and was lined up as the first elite to be sent off. 3…2…1… GO!

After waiting around so long post-run warm up, I was practically shivering before the start. This made the first 5 miles or so on the bike rather uncomfortable. 4 or 5 guys within that first 5-mile stretch immediately passed me and I simply could not get anything going… the legs were unresponsive! Thankfully, at the first right turn, I started to warm up and locked in on the guys who had recently blown past. I picked off a few right away, battled with another and then set my sights on the last guy ahead. I saw him at the turn around and he was way up on me, I’m talking WAY up! This guy was super strong and instead of turning myself inside out to catch up to him, I focused on my own effort and made the decision that this was not the race that I was going to dig myself into a hole for. Still, I rode right at my threshold level and came in with a strong bike split.

Starting the bike. Hey legs... you don't feel good 

I stumbled through the transition because my shoes were still soaking wet from the morning downpour. At this point, the skies were clearing up and it started to actually get pretty warm. I knew I was in second place at this point and locked in, hoping the guy ahead would fall back on the run. The course is two 5k out and back’s, so it was the perfect course for me to gauge the competition ahead and behind. Around mile 1.25, I saw the guy who was in first place coming back the other direction; this meant he had roughly a .5-mile gap on me within the first mile of the race. The legs started to come around at this point and I proceeded to launch my attack but could never quite settle into that rhythm. I never felt bad, but I never felt good. I was able to see that I had a pretty comfortable hold on second place and that first place was pretty far out of reach. I didn’t let up by any means, but I didn’t push it that extra gear- making the smart move. I came down the final hill and cruised into the finish with a respectable but not overly quick run split. I was happy that I had made my first podium at a 5150 event but was slightly disappointed it was not a true triathlon, especially because by the time I finished, the weather was absolutely perfect. I think that if we had swam, I would have possibly been in closer reach of the first place finisher. I might have been able to hold him off on the bike and take him down on the run but that is all speculation and at the end of the day, I was happy with the performance.

 

Cruising along but still making it hurt 

After the race, I met up with a few friends, did the usual post-race debriefing and then got my water-drenched gear out of transition. I slowly, rode up the hill back to the car, grabbed a snack and then biked around for a little while to cool down. I eventually met up with Alex and we jogged around for a few minutes to make sure I was fully cooled down before getting into the car for the long haul back home. I picked up my prize-cup and we quickly bounced out of there, driving first back to Kansas City for breakfast.

We got properly fueled up on coffee and peanut butter pancakes and then got right back in the car. Long journey short, we went from Kansas City to a random fireworks shop in Missouri, dropped off Alex, drove to Iowa City, had dinner at chipotle, packed up most of my apartment for the summer and then drove back to Chicago, making it back in time for a few meetings my Dad had first thing Monday morning- rounding out a nice 22 hour day!

Jacked up on sugar and coffee  

Although I had to roll with the punches a little bit on this one, it was a really fun weekend and I had a great time pretty much just chillin’ with my Dad. It was also nice to get the free entry to the 5150 US Championship race at HyVee and to lay down a really strong performance on a day where the conditions were rough and my race priority was low. I look forward to putting in another couple of hard training sessions leading up the my next race of the season, the Leon’s World’s Fastest Triathlon in Hammond, Indiana. If you are in the Chicago land area, come check it out!

As always, thanks to my Dad for being a straight up beast race supporter, Craig Strong at Precision for the coaching and support, Nuun for that oh’ so good fizzy deliciousness and Running Away Multisport for the Zipp disc.

Go ride your bike today, I guarantee it will be a good time!

 
Justin