Crushing It!

I’ve never been particularly fast.  Considering I didn’t even run a mile without stopping until I was 32, my legs never really understood speed.  For the past two weeks I’ve been visualizing the sprint triathlon that I did today.  The Pasadena Triathlon is a “reverse” sprint triathlon, meaning that the order of events is run, bike and then swim.  What is most notable is that I did this race for the first time in 1993, when it was only my third triathlon.  Today would be my 98^th triathlon since my first race in 1992.  Ironically, that one, in Cerritos, also followed the “reverse” format.  My training lately has been devoid of speed and focused solely on my Ironman coming up in October.  Running fast, and even biking super hard, are not things that I’ve been practicing.  Which means that my mind isn’t used to the feeling of essentially going all out for an hour.  That was the goal.  And, to that end, I’d been visualizing this race every day and night for the past two weeks.  
 
It was my plan to run the 5K as if it were a 5K race, though not quite to the point of feeling like I needed to throw up or pass out at the finish.  The next part was the unknown, although I had a sense that I could race the bike as hard as I could, literally turning the run-bike combination into a 10K run, which is a painful experience.  Obviously, at the end of all of this was a 150m swim, which never concerned me.  
 
The course was a 5K loop around the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, the first half of the loop being a gradual uphill and the second half a gradual downhill.  The bike was three laps of the same loop.  After the bike, there was a 400m run to the Olympic distance pool, where we would complete three lengths.  
 
I warmed up by running about 2 ½ miles prior to the race.  The crazy part is that during my warm-up picking up the pace to what I planned to do felt hard.  Truly, my brain is not used to running fast.  I started with the first group, planning to finish the race in under one hour. The record for the course was right around 49 minutes.  Anything one hour or better would definitely represent a seriously strong effort. From the start, I went out fast, starting at under 7 minute per mile pace, but gradually “settled into” a hard effort/pace that led to a first mile (which was uphill) of 7:40.  Check.  That was exactly what I’d planned to do.  I was breathing every third step, and it felt hard, but it also felt like I could hold the pace.  I was looking forward to getting to the halfway point, where the course started going slightly downhill.  Before I knew it, I had finished my second mile in 7:33.  Check.  With one mile to go, I really focused on going fast, and literally allowing myself to suffer.  My breathing was still hard, and I even allowed myself a quiet “grunt,” which has long been my trademark.  As I looked down at my watch during the third mile, I realized that I was keeping close to 7:15 pace.  It was hard but knowing that I was still going fast gave me the encouragement that I needed to keep pushing hard.  I hit the third mile in 7:12 and realized that the course was going to be a bit longer than 5K.  That was ok, I could still push hard through transition.  My 5K time was actually 23:13, which remarkably is the fastest 5K I’ve done in several years.  And I still had to bike!  My time arriving in transition for the run was 24:32 (7:28 pace), which was 76^thoverall. I ran to my bike, kicked off my running shoes, hat and my race belt (which I fumbled with a bit), and put on my helmet, grabbed my bike and made my way out of transition to the mount line. Transition took me 50 seconds, which was solid (45^th overall).  
 
I had my bike shoes on my bike and got my right foot in, pushed off a few times an put my left foot on top of my left shoe.  There was a “no passing” lane for a bit, so I couldn’t go fast, and it allowed me to reach down and put my left foot in my shoe and tighten both shoes.  I turned on the bike portion of my garmin watch and got to the beginning of the first loop.  From that moment to the time I got to the end of the third loop I just pushed a hard as I could.  I figured that I’d learn the course during the first lap, which I did.  The first part of the loop was uphill, and I just put my head down and buried myself with a hard effort. The second part had some downhill and an opportunity to keep pushing and hold some speed.  
 
There were two take home lessons from the bike.  The first was that I went out hard and managed to maintain the same hard effort during the second loop, and then repeat it a third time knowing that I would be done shortly thereafter.  Considering that I’d just done a nearly all out 5.3K run, the bike effort definitely “hurt.”  But, I ignored the discomfort and just powered through, knowing that it would be over soon enough.
 
The second lesson was that there were a lot of triathlon “newbies” in the race.  The first lap was fine, as I was passing fairly solid athletes, but the second and third loops was like riding in an obstacle course.  People riding 10mph on the left, and when I yelled, “on your left” at the top of my lungs, they either didn’t move, moved to the right, or, worse yet, moved to the left.  This clearly caused me to slow a little at times, but I planned ahead with each person I was passing and it only got dicey a couple of times.  I even passed someone who was riding on the left side of the road and talking on a cell phone!  Before I new it, I was finishing the third loop.  I think the person who was at the turnoff thought I had another lap to go, probably surprised by the grey hair and finishing so soon!  My normalized Power on the first lap was 190 watts and my speed was 20.4 mph; the second lap was 197 watts and 21.4 mph and the third lap was 193 watts and 21.4 mph.  My bike time was 28:38, which was 31^st overall.  I got out of my bike shoes shortly before the bike finish and did my usual flying dismount, racked my bike, took off my helmet, my glasses and socks and quickly put on my running shoes and swim cap and grabbed my swim goggles.  The run to the pool was about 400m and that was included in our second transition time, which was 2:56.  I was 118^th overall with this time.  In retrospect, perhaps running in bare feet and forgoing the swim cap might have save me some time.  Oh well.  Just before the pool entrance I kicked off my shoes and put on my goggles.
 
I got to the pool, jumped in and started swimming.  In a lot of ways, this was the easiest part of the race.  I was definitely winded, but my swim speed is pretty solid to begin with if I’m not going all out.  I went fairly hard, passed a few people (not too many in the pool yet, thankfully), and was soon at the final 50m.  I had visualized picking up my pace and my arm turnover, which I kind of did, but there wasn’t too much left in the tank at that point.  My swim time was 2:59 for the 150m (1:50/100 yard pace), and my official swim time (which included getting out of the water and walking past the timing mat, was 3:38 (67^th overall).  I kept 29 strokes per minute, which means I was working.  I was definitely winded at the end but finishing with the swim was somewhat of a godsend, allowing me to “cool down” somewhat at the end.  
 
My final time of 1:00:32 was slightly over the one hour I had hoped to finish in, but that had been assuming a 5K run and not 5.3K.  I pretty much did everything that I’d set out to do.  I suffered for an hour straight in a way that I’m not sure I’ve suffered before.  I kept pushing the entire time in a way that I don’t think I’ve ever pushed in terms of maintaining both effort and pace on the run and bike.  I was 40^th overall out of 578 people.  I won my age group by nearly 6 minutes.  I’ve never been “that guy,” but it felt good.  I do have to note that there were two 65 year old guys that beat me by a minute, both of them actually managed the transitions better than me and were clearly at the top of their age group.
 
When all was said and done, I felt like I’d executed almost flawlessly, left everything out there on the course, and literally “crushed it” today.  Two age group Sprint wins in a row feels pretty good.