LA Tri Race Report

It was a 4:00 am wake up call but only because I couldn't sleep. I'd set my alarm for 5:00 am, I only needed 15 minutes to get ready and it was a 15 minute bike ride to the race start from where I was staying. It would be easier riding there rather then trying to deal with parking so I specifically looked for a place to stay fairly close to the race. All I had to do was get my tri suit on under some shorts and a t-shirt, grab my new transition backpack, jump on the bike and head off. I had some time to kill now so I went through my gear to make sure I had everything but apparently I didn't do a good enough job of that. More on that later. I couldn't wait around any more so I left a little early and you would think that at 5:00 am there wouldn't be a hell of a lot of life going on. But this is Venice Beach. I started my way down toward the beach boardwalk and I was passing people coming from who knows where. When I got to the boardwalk it was about a 2 km ride to T1. I saw skate boarders, people walking dogs, one lady rummaging through waste bins and a couple of guys having a "bath" in the sinks at the public restrooms. This is one strange place. I got to T1 and searched for my wave's setup area and luckily it was right next to T1 exit and this would make it easy to find when I came in from the swim. I racked my bike and opened up my transition bag, set things up, grabbed my litre bottle of water and then wandered off to check things out. First I wanted to see where T1 entry from the swim was and once I located that I figured out the best route to my spot. Then I headed to body marking and from there I made my way to the pro's transition area. This race is fairly high profile and included today were Javier Gomez, the 2010 ITU World Champion, Matt Reed and Greg Bennet. This sport is great. What other sport can you compete in the same competition as professionals? In July in Solana beach I was in a race with Scott Tinley, a 2 time winner in Kona. I went over to drool a bit over the pro's gear and in case you're interested Chris, Gomez's setup is a HED rear disc with an H3 front. Sound familiar? A little more wandering around, I hit the Port-O-Potty and headed over to watch the pro men's start. After that I went back to my spot to put on my wetsuit and get down to the water to do a warm up swim but first, another visit to the Port-O-Potty. You can never pee too much before a race. I made my way to the water and just kind of hung around till about 20 minutes before my wave start at which point I wanted to get in for a short warm up swim and then get up to the start line. I asked someone what time it was and at 8:15 I got on my cap and goggles and headed into the water. Ocean swims are way different than lake or river swims. In a lake the water is usually calm unless it's pretty windy and in river you may have a bit of a current but in the ocean you've got the tide, surf, waves and swells. Well here we had all of these. The tide seemed to be coming in which made it a bit of a chore walking out, the surf would smack you which pushed you backwards several feet and just beyond the surf the waves would break and swamp you. And once you got past the breakers you'd have to deal with the swells which often obscured the buoys so sighting was touch and go. Well I never made it to the swells. I got crushed by a wave just as it broke and while it didn't do me any damage since I was ready for it, the wave ripped my goggles right off my head. OH CRAP! I looked all around but nothing. These things were gone. I was about 15 minutes away from starting so I busted my ass out of the water and ran back to transition and here's where my earlier comment of not doing a good enough job of checking my gear before I left the house became apparent. I brought 2 pair of goggles to LA but as I rummaged through my bag I couldn't find the 2nd pair ... they were back at the house in my luggage. DOH!! What a dope. What to do now? Beg, borrow or steal came to mind. So I immediately started asking people if anyone had an extra pair and finally one guy said he did and pulled them out for me. You gotta love triathletes. Some guy I`ve never met before hands me his backup goggles and likely doesn`t expect to see them again. He was starting in the wave after mine so I would probably come out of the water before him so I asked him which spot was his, where was his bag and told him I`d run by and drop them off and thanked him profusely. I charged to the swim start and got there with just a couple of minutes before the start. The horn went off and we all raced down the beach and into the water and it was so powerful it felt like I was battling my way through gel. Then the surf, a couple of big waves that I dove under and came up on the other side and I was off swimming. Geez, I was already tired but I got into a rhythm and headed towards the first buoy which would be a left turn. I got there and made my turn but a few minutes later I realized I was kind of swimming alone. I`d been trying to sight often but the swells made it difficult to get a good view so I stopped and took a look at where I was. Well I guess I hadn`t made a tight enough turn the buoy and I think I was swimming out to sea. Yikes! I made a course correction and made my way back towards the line of buoys but again, the swells gave me problems and I stopped again to do a check and I saw that I`d swam past the line of buoys and was swimming towards shore. This was supposed to be a 1500 m swim but I think I managed to turn it into 1700 m. So I made up my mind that I would swim back towards the line of buoys and find another swimmer and rely on his sighting. No way it would be worse than mine. I managed to get next to another guy and I just swam at his side through all the rest of the buoys and everything was fine until at about 800 m one of my calves tightened and felt like it would cramp. So I stopped kicking for a bit and when it felt better I started to kick again. Then at about 1200 m both my calves just about cramped. The water was cold and even though my wetsuit kept me warm my calves must have been affected. I`d cut 4 inches off the legs because I was having trouble getting the suit off and my calves were now partially exposed. Well I stopped kicking entirely for the rest of the swim because cramps were the last thing I wanted with the bike and run still to go. While the wetsuit kept me level in the water I`m used to kicking to help with balance and it just felt strange to swim without moving my legs but I wasn`t about to risk cramping. I got around the last buoy and swam towards shore and just as I got to where I could put my feet down I looked behind me to see where the waves were so I wouldn`t get hit from behind by one. Too late. I got swamped by a monster wave and got knocked under the water and for a couple of seconds I didn`t know which way was up. But luckily my feet hit the bottom and I stood up and got my ass out of the water as fast as I could. Read this: http://www.presstelegram.com/breakingnews/ci_16248551 about the number of swimmers needing rescuing. My time was 38:30 which sucks for a 1500 m but not bad for about the 1600-1700 m I probably ended up doing. I ran into T1, ran by where I think I was supposed to drop off the goggles and threw them into what I think was the guys bag but if not I`m really sorry dude but thanks for letting me use them. I got to my spot and removed my wetsuit which after being cut, came off really easy. I threw it and my cap and nose plug into my bag and closed it up and had it ready to be picked up for transport to the race finish. They told us that anything that was on the ground around any bag would not get picked up so it was important to get everything into the bag and secured. This is where my new bag really came in handy. Check these out to get an idea of how it works: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8e-hUGsOBQ, and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8CCJboaF2E. Socks, shoes and helmet on and away I went. The bike course started at sea level and ended uatto about 135 feet in elevation. The 1st 16 km were a very gradual grade and I was able to maintain a pretty good pace but I felt more tired than I should have on a road like this. The last 24 km were an 8 km loop that we did in, out and back in and it wasn`t as flat but more gently rolling. Even with feeling like I was working too hard for the pace I was keeping I ended up with a 1:12:02, a 33.5 km per hour average speed. I ran into T2, found where I`d been assigned my spot and got out of my helmet and bike shoes and got on my runners, grabbed my number belt and visor and raced out. Most of the morning had been cloudy but with about 5 km to go in the ride the sun came out and it was starting to get warm. I find that coming out of T2 for the run my adrenaline gets going and I start out way too fast and that was the case again as I looked at my watch and saw that I was running at a 4:30 pace. I didn`t want to be doing that so I yelled at myself to `slow down, slow down` and even though I felt like I was crawing I was still running at a 5:00 pace. Even this was a bit fast at this point but I felt good so kept that pace going. The run was a 2 loop 2.5 km course shaped like the letter `L` with the lower part of the `L` only about 500 m long and the rest about 2 km long. The first 500 m was flat but once we made the turn it was an upwards grade for about 1.5 km and then we hit `The Hill`. That term is an understatement, it was a Wall. It was about 60 feet of gain over the 1st 1.5 km and then 70 feet of elevation gain over about 200 metres. That hurt. It killed my legs temporarily and obviously smacked my time but I wasn`t going to walk it. I shortened my strides, slowed up a bit and leaned into the hill and plugged away to the top. At the top it was a short run to the turn around at the Walt Disney Concert Hall and back down to finish the first loop. Going down `The Wall` still worked my legs because it was so steep I had to `brake` all the way down. But once I got to the bottom it was a downhill run and I was able to pick up my pace while still recovering. My second loop was a bit easier and after climbing the hill I was able to steadily increase my pace as I ran the last 2 km into the finish line at the Staples Center. The race was a bit tougher than I thought it would be but I think I was verging on a cold. I`d had a bit of a sore throat the previous couple of days that I`d hoped would disappear and it did but it must have just been a pre-cursor. I caught the shuttle back to Venice Beach and rode back to the house where I showered, pack my luggage and gear into the truck and took off for San Diego. After getting to Tammy`s mom`s house I unpacked everything I went a grabbed some food and by 9:00 pm I was hammered tired. This was way unusual for me but I crashed and slept for a while but I was up in the middle of the night with first chills and then the sweats and aches and a headache. I figure I`ll take today real easy and try to get over this and get into training starting tomorrow and build through the week with some riding, running and swimming on Tuesday and Wednesday and a long tough ride on Thursday and a long hard run on Friday. Well that`s the plan.