Earlier this week I met some young elite triathletes at my health club. They’re training there this winter. In speaking to them, I realized that I knew one of them from when I lived in Colorado. In fact, I had raced against him a couple of times and actually beat him. Of course, that was ten years ago, and he was 13 years old! That brought back memories of my best race ever. In 2008 I entered a race called Tri4Me. I went back and found my comments in my training logs and thought that I’d allow myself a little flashback. It was late April, 2008, an it was cold out, right around 32 degrees. The swim was indoors at the Montclair Recreation Center.
“Felt pretty good this morning. Minimal warm up allowed, able to get in only about 50m.” There were four of us in each lane, and our start was staggered. George Dallam, one of the best in my age group at the time, and the author of a triathlon training book, was in the lane next to me and started 10 seconds before me. This will matter later on. “Focused on form throughout swim, kept effort moderately hard, never felt like I was redlining it, kept ~1:30 pace/100 METERS (yes, per 100 meters); felt fine coming out of water, tried to put arm warmers on, but arms wet, so decided not to. Good Transition. Bike was pretty technical, with lots of turns, very windy, very cold, kept wattage ~200-220 when I could, last lap (4 lap course), definitely kept wattage up over 220 a good portion, again when not turning or slowing down, or trying to keep from getting blown over, HR was 150-154 throughout the bike. Normalized Power=188, but hard to judge due to lots of slowing down on the turns and winds. Got to T2, found out I was 30 seconds behind the guy in front of me (George Dallam, one of the top men in my age group, he beat me by 5 minutes at the Fall Frenzy last year!), he started 10 seconds before me, but I still wanted to catch him, got him in my sights within the first 400 and then gradually reeled him in, drawing even after about 1 1/4 miles, he tried to push me on the uphill, but actually, it wasn't hard for me to stay with him. Every time he started to push, so did I.”
I remember this like it was yesterday. I’d never felt this way before, and never have since. I felt invincible, like there was no way he could run faster than me. I don’t know where that strength came from, but it felt awesome. It had also started to snow at this time, making for a very surreal triathlon!
“What I didn't do was try to push him. One reason was that I knew that I had a 10 second cushion, and that if I finished with him, I had him beat. In retrospect, from a racing perspective, it would have been interesting to try to push the pace on him rather than react to him. That said, I sprinted at the end, got a step on him, but so did he (with longer legs) and he edged me by a nose (literally!) at the finish line. It was cold, my fingers were numb and blue, and my feet were numb, but that didn't stop me on the run. My HR stayed between 150 and 155 on most of the run, not sure if affected by cold (<40 1="" 2nd="" 3rd="" 4th="" 5="" 75="" 7th="" 8="" 8th="" a="" account="" age="" ahead="" amount="" and="" another="" as="" at="" beat="" bike="" but="" by="" came="" cold="" comparison="" conditions="" consistent="" dealing="" degrees="" didn="" do="" down.="" effort="" energy="" even.="" fall="" fastest="" field="" finished="" first="" fish="" for="" frenzy="" good="" group.="" guy="" hard="" him.="" him="" how="" however="" hr="" i.e.="" i="" in="" is="" it="" judge="" just="" kept="" know="" m="" me="" minutes="" much="" my="" nbsp="" obsessive="" obviously="" of="" on="" only="" overall="" people="" place="" pretty="" probably="" purposes="" put="" race:="" race="" real="" realize="" relation="" run.="" said="" second="" several="" significant="" slower="" span="" speed.="" spent="" swim="" t="" terms="" that="" the="" there="" throughout="" to="" today.="" today="" too="" took="" tremendous="" very="" was.="" was="" wattage="" well="" were="" who="" wind="" with="" yes="" young="">
I remember wanting to get the feeling that I had that day back, but really haven’t done that. I was clearly in the zone. That concept is real, and I will vouch for it. As I work on getting back into shape and top fitness, it’s good to flashback to this day and to visualize how I felt. Maybe one day in the future I can get into a similar zone!
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