After a rather successful weekend at the Collegiate National Championship in Tempe, I was feeling pretty awesome the week before the event. I took a few days to recover and then put in a solid 10 days of hard but controlled work to maintain my fitness and sharpen up. Being a last minute addition to the schedule meant I would be heading down south for a good time, some sun and hopefully a nice hard race without any expectation or pressure.
Below is my race report from the 2013 St. Anthony's Triathlon in beautiful St. Petersburg, Florida. Enjoy! (and sorry for the slight delay- I am still in school for another two weeks people!)
The trip started off with a Thursday evening flight out of Cedar Rapids, Iowa directly into Tampa/ St. Petersburg. Making the trek to the race would be Alex, his girlfriend Kelli and myself. One may think I was doing some hard-core third-wheelin' but these guys are two of my really close friends and it was great hanging out together all weekend. The flight was quick and smooth, bag pickup and car rental was easy and we were on the road by about 10:00 PM. After a 1 hour drive, we made it to our final destination, back to Siesta Key where we were staying at Rick and Essie's house! (the same gracious hosts from my trip to Florida for the ITU Sarasota race in March)
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| Dinner time-flight means full buffet style/ odd looks from my flight companions. Pre-microwaved sweet potato, vegetables and avocado do the trick! Unintentionally super beta-carotene'd on this meal. |
As if Alex and my coach were conversing, we both had a complete day of rest on Friday. So, after getting in pretty late on Thursday night, we slept in as late as possible on Friday morning. After having a quick morning snack and a little bit of coffee, we decided first things first and off to the gluten-free bakery/ grocery store we went! The rest of the day was super relaxed and carefree. We built our bikes, went to the bike shop to get bikes properly reassembled (I'm still learning the in's and out's of completely taking a race bike apart/ putting it back together) and then kicked up the feet for the rest of the afternoon/ evening. We even rented Django Unchained which is a super-bad-ass movie that I would totally recommend to anyone (even though we had to stop it half way and finish it the next day because it was getting late- yep we are lame and yep Kelli let us know that).
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| That's my bike! In a much smaller form. |
Saturday was a pretty traditional, hectic pre-race day. We started things off with a morning shakeout brick and a sizeable breakfast. We then got our things together (yes, we broke out a cooler for food) and made the 1 hour drive from Siesta Key to the race site for packet pickup, Alex's pro meeting and bike check-in. After strolling through the disappointing expo, picking up my packet and racking my bike, I headed over to the tent where Alex had to be for the mandatory pro-athlete informational session. Besides awkwardly strolling in about 30:00 after the meeting started, I sat down next to some of the best triathletes ever to walk the face of this planet. I tried to blend in, look cool and keep calm, but all I wanted to do was jump up and down, cry from excitement and sit on Jan Frodeno's lap all the while not involuntarily wetting my pants. I was like a 12 year old girl in a room of 50 Justin Bieber's.
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| ME (on the inside) |
After that episode, we made our way back to the van and headed back to Siesta Key. I spent the rest of the evening relaxing, foam rolling, eating and watching the rest of Django. I got to bed early and besides being awoken by 1 missed call, 1 voice mail, 1 reminder that I had a voice mail, 1 text message and 1 reminder that I had a text message at 2:00 AM because of a Hawk Alert, I slept pretty well!
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| Happy I was nowhere near the stabbing-asian main pumped about being an American but not so happy that it was 2:20 AM. |
The Hawk Alert was pretty much ended up serving as a pre-alarm clock because I had set my alarm for 3:45 AM. I half slept/ laid there for a while before getting up to have my traditional pre-race breakfast, load up the rest of my gear and hit the road for the 1 hour drive back to St. Petersburg.
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| This is what I mean when I reference the "traditional breakfast" for those wondering. |
Running a little late, we rolled into the race site around 5:40 AM but were lucky enough to have VIP parking due to Alex's pro-status (perks of traveling with this dude- suck it Elite Amateur competitors who had to walk 5 minutes to the race site!) Alex and I stepped out of the car, commented on the VERY strong winds, exchanged good luck's and then headed our separate ways. I found my bike, pumped up my tires, set up my transition area and then went out for a 15:00 warm up jog. I did some dynamic stretching, made sure my transition area was 100% set to go and then spent a few minutes putting on my wetsuit (water temp was 76.5 degrees= HOT). After suiting up, I speed walked/ jogged the 1500m down the beach to the swim entrance. As I was walking up, the pro-race went off at 6:50 AM which meant I had 10:00 until my wave went off. I dipped into the water to fill up my wetsuit and then hopped right back out to jog over to the holding pen.
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| Looking out on the swim start |
The pro females went off and I got mentally prepared to race as the race director got on the loud speaker. Long story short, they were going to shorten the swim to ~800 meters due to the high winds and bad chop. In his words, "we have to look out for the 20% that shouldn't be out there anyway." I was annoyed but quickly refocused my attention to factors that were under my control- like beating each one of the guys next to me.
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| Time to kick some ass. |
After the 15:00 delay, they loaded us in the water for the start around 7:15. As always, the field annoyingly creeped forward before the gun and before I knew it, we were off. Unlike the previous three races of the season, this swim start was like a playful-pillow fight. No violent punches to the face or cage fight kicks to lower regions. All was good as I latched onto the back of the main pack, working hard but in complete control.
The new swim course was a straight shot parallel to shore with a sharp hairpin right turn at the final buoy. As I made my way around the buoy and approached the exit, I noticed some familiar faces of strong athletes and felt confident in my position with a swim time of 10:04.
Another downside to the altered swim was the fact that we now had to run a full 1 kilometer (0.62 miles) from the swim exit to the entrance of the transition area. I exited the water, stripped my wetsuit around my waist and started to haul ass on the pavement. I passed a few guys and saw one very strong runner in particular gap me in this section. I ran up to my bike, pulled my wetsuit completely off and got out of transition as fast and as cleanly as possible. Onto the bike with a total first transition time of 3:29 (including the 1k run).
Right out of transition there is a long section of cobbles that I hammered through like Cancellara. I strapped my shoes on and got to work right away. My legs felt stiff for the first 5 miles or so but I was able to stay positive and build into the effort. By the 10 mile mark, I was hammering along- threading that needle between "okay this is hard but I can keep it up" and "holy crap dude, calm down, we still got more biking and a whole lot of running to go!" My pedal stroke felt smooth and I knew I was in for a fast split. Although I do not wear a watch while I am racing, I was elated to find out that I had set a new 40k bike PR with a time of 0:58:55. BOOM!
Transition two was pretty flawless. Out and onto the run in 0:49.
With temperatures creeping up towards 80 degrees, it was getting rather toasty when we hit the run course. As I started to get my feet under me, I questioned if I had pushed the bike just a little to hard. My legs felt stiff, my cadence was low and I simply could not find a rhythm.... It was going to be a long 5 more miles at this rate!
And then, literally out of nowhere, I started passing a few guys. This put a little pep back up in my step and I started cruising. No accidental Gatorade shower, sharply painful foot blister or side stitches were going to stop me now! My cadence was on point and I was running light, strong and relaxed. I ran as hard as I could sustain for the remainder of the course and crossed the finish line 100% depleted....
WITH A NEW 10K RUN PR! 35:40 meant an average pace of 5:46 min/mi for the 6.2 miles.
One could say that I was rather happy with this performance. Not only did I manage to set a new 40k best bike split AND 10k run split, but I made my way through the field to finish 7th overall. Not a bad day at the office for a race that wasn't even on the schedule two weeks ago. Full race results: here.
After the race, Alex once again used his pro-status to get us into transition nearly an hour early to get our bikes and gear. We headed over to the car, left Kelly with all of our junk and went for a short cool down spin/ race debriefing. We grabbed some snacks and then got right to work on packing up the bikes. We had a flight to catch!
The new swim course was a straight shot parallel to shore with a sharp hairpin right turn at the final buoy. As I made my way around the buoy and approached the exit, I noticed some familiar faces of strong athletes and felt confident in my position with a swim time of 10:04.
Another downside to the altered swim was the fact that we now had to run a full 1 kilometer (0.62 miles) from the swim exit to the entrance of the transition area. I exited the water, stripped my wetsuit around my waist and started to haul ass on the pavement. I passed a few guys and saw one very strong runner in particular gap me in this section. I ran up to my bike, pulled my wetsuit completely off and got out of transition as fast and as cleanly as possible. Onto the bike with a total first transition time of 3:29 (including the 1k run).
Right out of transition there is a long section of cobbles that I hammered through like Cancellara. I strapped my shoes on and got to work right away. My legs felt stiff for the first 5 miles or so but I was able to stay positive and build into the effort. By the 10 mile mark, I was hammering along- threading that needle between "okay this is hard but I can keep it up" and "holy crap dude, calm down, we still got more biking and a whole lot of running to go!" My pedal stroke felt smooth and I knew I was in for a fast split. Although I do not wear a watch while I am racing, I was elated to find out that I had set a new 40k bike PR with a time of 0:58:55. BOOM!
Transition two was pretty flawless. Out and onto the run in 0:49.
With temperatures creeping up towards 80 degrees, it was getting rather toasty when we hit the run course. As I started to get my feet under me, I questioned if I had pushed the bike just a little to hard. My legs felt stiff, my cadence was low and I simply could not find a rhythm.... It was going to be a long 5 more miles at this rate!
And then, literally out of nowhere, I started passing a few guys. This put a little pep back up in my step and I started cruising. No accidental Gatorade shower, sharply painful foot blister or side stitches were going to stop me now! My cadence was on point and I was running light, strong and relaxed. I ran as hard as I could sustain for the remainder of the course and crossed the finish line 100% depleted....
WITH A NEW 10K RUN PR! 35:40 meant an average pace of 5:46 min/mi for the 6.2 miles.
One could say that I was rather happy with this performance. Not only did I manage to set a new 40k best bike split AND 10k run split, but I made my way through the field to finish 7th overall. Not a bad day at the office for a race that wasn't even on the schedule two weeks ago. Full race results: here.
After the race, Alex once again used his pro-status to get us into transition nearly an hour early to get our bikes and gear. We headed over to the car, left Kelly with all of our junk and went for a short cool down spin/ race debriefing. We grabbed some snacks and then got right to work on packing up the bikes. We had a flight to catch!
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| Hen House's all around! |
We actually made surprisingly quick work of packing up the bikes and got in the car around 12:00 with 3.5 hours before our flight departed.
I want to first and foremost thank Rick and Essie for letting the three of us stay at your house. It is so nice to be able to feel so comfortable and at home before a race! You guys are the absolute best.
I also want to throw a quick shout out to my #1 sponsors, supports and die hard fans; Mom and Dad. Thanks for allowing this trip to happen at the last minute and being there to support all of my larger than life goals.
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| Not going anywhere before a shade and snack break in the back of the mini van. That hummus wasn't going to eat itself before getting thrown away at the security line. |
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| Took down this bad-boy on the plane. Yes, that is a buckwheat banana pancake. Yes, that is self stirred PB2 to put on top. Yes, the incredibly small asian woman sitting next to me was unamused. That's what she gets for sleeping on my shoulder later in the flight! |
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As always, big thanks to Nuun Hydration for that oh-so-good Lemon Lime on the bike, PHL for that Endruox R4 getting that recovery going right after the race and Craig Strong at Precision Multisport for putting the plan together that has allowed me to not only progress in the sport over the years but also have such a successful start to the 2013 season.
Now here is a teaser for you all... With the success that I have had at my first few races, I may be taking my season racing plans in a slightly different direction. Stay tuned for more in the coming weeks!
Happy training and racing.
-Justin
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