This weekend was chock full of action.
I know that some people aren't big into reading anything longer than
bullet points. (I learned that while working corporate) So there is
an executive summary for anyone who doesn't want to get into the
details. Yes, a video recap would be more engaging, but the
technology isn't quite there yet. Someday.
The Executive Summary:
There was a monsoon Saturday morning,
parts of the bike route flooded.
Sara McLarty and I rode into each other
but neither of us crashed.
I smashed up my left foot and balanced
out my foot injuries for the season.
My dad was in town for the day and we
had lunch after the race.
Claire and I drove to Milwaukee
Saturday afternoon.
We got up at 4:20am Sunday for the
Pewaukee Tri.
It was a very toasty race on a
challenging course.
I finished 2nd to a 40 year
old from Christchurch New Zealand who crushed the bike and is very
funny.
The details:
Saturday, the Minneapolis Triathlon aka
Don't Forget Your Galoshes
I woke up early on Saturday for the
Minneapolis Tri and it was raining cats and dogs. Really really
raining. I
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| Saturday's monsoon was likely because I thoroughly cleaned my bike Friday night in the laundry/bike room. |
Transition was closed when I got to the
race site because of lightning and everyone was huddling under tents
to try and stay out of the rain. Thankfully Gear West had a large
tent for wrenching so I chatted with Kevin and waited for any news.
First the race was delayed until 7:30. Then we found out the olympic
bike course was impassable. All of the pros met to figure out what we
wanted to do. We had some back and forth between the swimmers and
runners and settled on doing just the sprint course, throwing out the
equalizer because of the disproportional bike length and not altering
the prize money. Then the race was delayed until 9.
Almost 5 hours after waking up I lined
up with the rest of the pro men to get the race under way. I lined up
to the left, hoping to get on the swim pack and use them as a break
from the waves rolling across the lake, but after a few snafus found
myself about 15 meters back for the entire first lap of the swim and
then farther back after the 2nd lap.
On the bike I had my closest call ever
with Sara McLarty. I was riding behind her, because of my stellar
swim, through a fairly technical part of the course and moved to pass
on the right (which is legal in a pro race). I didn't announce my
upcoming pass loudly enough and just as I was moving past Sara she
banked right through a sweeping turn. We made contact and suddenly we
were physically leaning into each other, both of us on the aero bars,
through the turn. Sara justly screamed, “Dan what the fuck!” and
I lamely yelled “Sara on your right!” Visions of our base bars
tangling and me ending Sara's career with a horrific crash flashed
through my head and then amazingly we separated and neither of us
went down. Close call.
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| Balance has been restored to the universe. |
I got off the bike and needed to make a
hard, hard right into transition to get to my rack but only completed
a hard right and smashed up my left foot. I have now achieved foot
injury balance and would be more than happy if I could manage not to
run into anything while barefoot for the rest of the year.
On the run I knew I wasn't going to
catch either of the guys in front of me without really burying myself
and had to do a quick cost benefit analysis. With Pewuakee Tri
offering $1000 for first the next day and 10th place
paying out $100 at Minneapolis I decided not to completely empty the
tank in hopes of making some good money the next day. I'll admit I'm
not proud of not “giving it my all” on Saturday, but stepping
outside of the abstract into the concrete world of 'how am I going to
pay for food this month' sometimes I have to compromise.
My dad was in town for the weekend and
we had lunch at the Townhouse Tap after the race with Claire. He was
supposed to get into Minneapolis Friday evening, but weather delays
down in the Carolinas pushed his arrival to midnight. After a quick
lunch Claire and I jammed everything into the Mini and hit the road
for the 5 hour drive to Milwaukee.
Sunday, the Pewaukee Tri aka Bring on
the Heat!
My alarm went off at 4:20 am Sunday
morning, even earlier than Saturday's 4:45 wake up call. Pewaukee is
a charming little town about 40 minutes outside of Milwaukee with
transition set up on Main Street. It feels a lot like the Heart of
the Lakes race at Annandale. The olympic was scheduled to start after
the sprint racers had started. During the last wave of sprint racers
there was a medical emergency with one of the racers and we all tried
to patiently wait 20 minutes or so for the rescue boats to get back
into place.
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| Absolutely gorgeous day in Wisconsin. |
The theme of the day was surprising
heat and humidity. The day was clear and standing on the
beach in a full sleeve black wetsuit left me a little light headed
after 10 minutes. As soon as we hit the water I could feel Saturday's
race in my arms, but wetsuits are an amazing thing to give you that
little extra boost. Three guys went off the front and ONCE AGAIN I
was just off their feet. I swam solo about 15 meters behind them for
the first half and only gave up 40 seconds total to the first guy out
of the water. It was a good thing I was able to stay within contact
for sighting, the sun was shining directly into our faces on the
return trip and was blinding. The only thing I could see was the
standup paddle boarder that was leading the course, so I just
followed him.
I've been using the rowing machine at
the pool for 10 or 15 minutes every day before I swim for the past
few weeks. I simply don't have the upper body power to get out fast
enough right now to stay with the main swim pack. I'm always just out
of reach after 200 meters and vainly struggle to stay within contact
through about 800 meters before slowly falling farther and farther
back. It's frustrating because I know that if I can be in that pack
at 400 meters I'd have the ability to ride their draft into
transition and I'm so close to doing it. Building top end speed is
never easy, and I think swimming is one of the hardest sports to try
and do it in. Sprinting in swimming is like trying to execute a
perfect golf swing, but you have to execute that perfect swing over
and over while standing on a wobble board after running a quarter
mile as hard as you can while breathing through a straw. A lot of
sprinting is muscle memory, which is why sprinters do drills over and
over. In the moment of actual execution you aren't thinking about
technique, because your brain is screaming at you to stop trying to
kill yourself. Building muscle memory takes time, which is
frustrating. And in swimming all of the rules of force and balance
that I have ingrained from 12+ years of running are backwards, the
plane of motion is horizontal with an emphasis on rotation and the
surface you apply force to is only semi solid.
I don't mean to complain though. Since
starting swimming I have gained an immense amount of respect for the
people who are able to swim very well. It's an unnatural thing that
requires years of focused practice, which is why good swimmers are
all very tall and oddly proportioned people who appear to be drunk
whenever they're trying to exercise on solid ground. Every time I
make a breakthrough in the pool it gives me an immense feeling of
accomplishment, I love it. It's so challenging that in some ways I've
come to love swimming more than running. I know I'll make that pack,
I'm so very close to doing it.
Meanwhile back at Pewaukee the bike
course was a challenging and technical double loop of the sprint
course. Claire had told me beforehand that the bike was rolling hills
with a few turns, which was an outright lie. Lots of hills, with some
screaming 40mph descents that were exciting and some very tight turns
that I was able to use to make up time on the couple of people in
front of me. My bottle shot off the front of my bike like a rocket
going over some railroad tracks on the first loop, which has never
happened to me. I was bummed because of the heat and missing out on
fluids. I slowed at every aid station on the run to drink water,
which I haven't felt the need to do in a race before.
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| This is not Bryan Rhodes, this is my dad. However Bryan is only 5 years younger than my dad. |
At the end of the day I was 2nd
to Bryan Rhodes, a 40 year old! Plus he's an iron distance guy! I've
always said old man strength is a powerful thing and he proved it by
crushing me on the bike by 4 full minutes. We chatted after the race
for a while which was fun because he's actually a hilarious guy. Like
a lot of foreigners(he's from Christchurch New Zealand), Bryan spices
up his conversations by liberally dropping the F bomb with a
casualness that I envy. At first my midwestern sensibility was
shocked and a little uncomfortable with his callousness, but then I
remembered that I hate being politically correct and trying never to
offend anyone with language and we had a couple great laughs.
Incidentally, Bryan seems to also
appreciate the value of great facial hair, which you can see in the
pictures on his website: http://www.rhodsey.com/index.htm
and ESPECIALLY this one:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151142319263319&set=t.692096367&type=3&theater
Afterwards Claire and I packed up and
drove the 5 hours back home. Killer Weekend.
Now I have two weeks of training before
my annual dose of self destruction at the Chisago Half. This is a
good chance for me to try and figure out how to better fuel for the 4
hour sufferfest without bonking in spectacular fashion as I am wont
to do. Further upping the challenge, my coach, who is me-self,
reminded me that I haven't ridden my bike farther than 30 miles this
year and that a half iron bike is 56 miles. So I will do what most
'coaches' who actually don't know anything other than how to copy
training plans out of a book would tell you not to do and squeeze in
a ride of 75 miles this Wednesday and 55 miles this upcoming Sunday.
Wish me luck and train safe out there.
