San Dimas Turkey Sprint Triathlon

11-30-08 Turkey Triathlon, San Dimas CA

I had the pleasure today of participating in my first triathlon. This was a sprint distance triathlon, composed of the following distances:

Swim 0.5 mi 0:29:05 (ouch!)

Bike 14 mi 0:47:29

Run 4.5 mi 0:32:14

Total Time 1:48:48

Age group place: 16/55

I have been a pure marathon runner for the past two years, and got into triathlon in July 2008 after suffering an unfortunate stress fracture in my left foot from running high volume hills. As such, I definitely fall into the stereotype of injured runners becoming triathletes. Still, I have come to really enjoy the sport, particularly the swim aspect of it, as it is completely foreign to me, and required a lot of attention to technique to get a basic swim stroke down. After about 3 months of swimming and cycling, I was able to reintroduce running, and have had no physical problems over the past 5 weeks training.

This race was definitely a "get my feet wet" race, meaning I had no time goal whatsoever, and few discrete goals other than surviving the swim. I was hoping that after all my dedicated swim training over the past 4 months that I would be able to translate it into a 50% midfield swim finish, as my pool times and distances have improved tremendously in this time. There was one major catch though - I have no open water experience, and due to a very busy work schedule as of late (working almost all weekends), I was unable to get in a wetsuit open water swim session prior to the race. In addition, I had zero transition practice, despite my knowledge that transitions are a very important part of the race. The open water swim inexperience would end up becoming a major factor, as you'll see in my race report below.

The race was held in Bonelli Park in San Dimas, about 1 hour east of Los Angeles. We Southern Californians are completely spoiled by absolutely gorgeous fall/winter weather. While most of the east coast and midwest is hovering about 30degrees, our daytime temps are averaging a lovely 60-70F, with plenty of sunshine. Race day would prove no different, with a gorgeous 55F morning, warming to mid 60s by 8AM. Absolutely perfect, and a wonderful complement to the lake in the park.

Prerace dawn in Bonelli Park, San Dimas

I arrived plenty early, which was a good idea, as I could claim an early spot in the transition area. I just copied what everyone else was doing, hanging my bike up by the seatpost on the bike rack, and using a towel to spread the rest of my stuff across the floor. Actually, the transition area was a lot simpler than I expected it to be. At my nonelite level, I really don't think it's a big deal, even in a sprint distance race, to take a few extra seconds in the transition to get comfortable and make sure everything is on correctly. Everyone was grouped according to age/sex in the transition area and swim waves, so I had the chance to see everyone else in my AG that I would be racing against. Lots of different appearing folks here; a few mountain bikes (ouch), at least 2 bikes more expensive than my pricey bike, and a few guys who you could tell were good swimmers. A bunch of guys from a tri-team also showed up, and I expected that they would likely take home all the AG awards at this race. I was warned beforehand about the "aggro" feel of the transition areas, but that couldn't be further from the truth today, with everyone being relaxed and friendly. It definitely helps that this was a "Turkey" tri and not an Ironman!

Competitors preparing in the transition area

THE SWIM

I was in swim wave 4, and I got to take a small dip in the water before getting started. I knew the swim would be rough right away - I was having a hard time breathing in my compressive full-length wetsuit which I had never worn before (but was fit-tested and deemed to be perfectly sized by the store expert), and I realized that sighting was much, much more difficult than I had expected. Still, I just hoped that I'd stay wide, and be able to tail the back of the pack around the buoys. The first 3 waves got started ahead of us, and it didn't look that hard from the shore. I started to feel a lot better about the race, and got fired about jumping into the water. Soon, it was our turn, and we were off.

Almost everyone in my wave started out running into the water. Me and one other guy (his 1st tri as well) leisurely walked in, and went wide. I started swimming, and felt ok, but within 5 minutes, I started to have a mild panic attack. The combination of not being able to see, and having problems breathing due to the wetsuit compressing my lungs was really playing mind games with me. Even though I was barely stroking in the water, my HR shot up to the 150s, and I hadn't even swam 50 meters yet. Yikes! I had expected mild panic, so I just continued to concentrate on relaxing, and focusing on my form, telling myself it would get better. However, I noticed I was veering all over the place in the lake, and couldn't hold a straight line at all. I had specifically practiced this in the pool over the past month, to the point where I could swim nearly the entire 25m length of a pool with my eyes closed, and I could hold an excellent line in the pool, but I suspect that the wetsuit altered my form, causing me to veer erratically. After 5 minutes of feeling like I was going nowhere, I saw that I was going further and further off course. It was me, and 2 other guys in orange caps from my wave towing the rear, and those two guys were doing the backstroke. I kept at it, but hadn't improved in the next 10 minutes. In fact, now my arms were getting tired, as the increased resistance from the elastic wetsuit was fatiguing my arms. This was not looking good, and I had only swam the first 1/4 of the course!

I started to really panic at this point. I flipped over on my back, and did a slow backstroke to cool off. After about 30 seconds of this, I'd go back to my crawl, panic again, and flip back over to my backstroke. All the while, I was at least 30, if not 40 meters away from the inner buoy line, so I was adding a lot of distance to my swim. A lifeguard asked me if I was ok, and I nodded, and started my crawl again as I neared the halfway buoy, still unsure if I'd make it. At this point, the fast guys from the wave behind me in blue caps came flying by, and ironically, now, instead of being too wide on the course, I realized that I was in the worst spot possible for a beginner OWS swimmer in a race - not even 10 feet from the turnaround buoy, which meant every single fast swimmer was bearing down right on top of me. I panicked again, and tried to swim wide, and ended up get swum over by 3-4 men. After 4-5 other people grazing me (fortunately, no hard blows), I was clear of the buoy, and felt pretty spent. Was this really only a 0.5 mile swim? I rarely swim less than 1 mile in training, yet this seemed to be the longest swim of my entire life.

As I crossed the buoy, I finally lost my sense of panic, and realized that I was going to make it. The shoreline was a dead straight shot ahead, about 400 meters out. I could do this. I went back to my crawl, and kept the pace easy. Now some swimmers from the wave 2 behind me in red caps (!) went passing by. This was getting really humiliating, but on the bright side, I started to think, "WTF - I'm not THIS slow!" and I started to really swim. Suddenly, I was keeping pace with the slower swimmers around me, and headed right toward shore. My confidence grew in the last 200 meters, and I managed to pick up the pace a tiny bit. Still, I've never been happier to see the shore. When I crawled out of the water, the spectators were surprised when they saw me raise my arms and cheer for myself as if I'd won the race, yelling "I made it!" Nobody cheered back, unfortunately.

29:05 for 0.5 miles, 51/55^th AG. That’s nearly TWICE as slow as I had planned to swim, but I made it!

TRANSITION 1 - SWIM TO BIKE

One disorganized transition mat - mine!

I started stripping my wetsuit in the 200m jog to the transition area like everyone else. I was minimally winded, as my HR started to come back down after losing the panic. Unfortunately, my left arm got totally stuck in my wetsuit, despite my having bodyglided the entire forearm. It just wouldn't come out. I jogged like a one-armed chicken to my bike, then struggled with it more until it finally came loose. At that moment, I had the demoralizing moment of looking around the bike rack and seeing that only ONE other bike besides mine had not yet departed on the bike leg - everyone else had left a long, long time ago. Still, I was still feeling better and better about finishing the swim, so I grabbed my helmet, and headed on out.

I was planning to do the "leave your shoes clipped onto the bike" technique where you start the bike out of your shoes and crawl in while on the bike. Unfortunately, today, I wasn't feeling it. I pushed my bike to the takeoff area, thought about swinging my leg over, and then abruptly decided that I didn't want to risk wiping out. So, in front of hundreds of spectators, I pulled to the side, manually unclipped my shoes by hand, put them on, and got back on the bike. Not before I got passed by 5 or so cyclists. Most of the spectators wondered what the heck I was doing - totally newbie move there. Doh.

THE BIKE

As you probably know by now, I ride an incredibly fast triathlon bike that cost thousands of dollars, the Cervelo P2C. It's the same bike that the female winner of the world Ironman championships used to win that race as well as many other major races in 2008, so it has a very race-proven pedigree. Cervelo is one of the biggest names in pro triathlon bikes, dominating the field in the world championships. This bike is definitely way better than I will ever be, but I have been gradually learning to really take advantage of its incredible speed and aerodynamic positioning.

The moment I jumped onto my bike, I remembered why I was here today. Not to just flail through an ugly swim, but to ride fast and run fast as well. When I saw how relatively slowly the cyclists immediately ahead of me were moving, I knew that it was time to throw down the hammer. After passing the first 5 cyclists as if they weren't moving, I knew that it was time to throw down the sledge-hammer! It would be 14 miles of fast cycling, at about 80-90% of my capacity. I stayed in the aerobars position for nearly the entire time, and on the two significant hills on the course, I got aggressive and got out of the saddle to continue passing people. It was impossible to count how many people I passed - it was close to a hundred. The reality though, is that I really feel like I am "cheating" on my bike, because it is such a fast bike. I passed a lot of bikes more expensive than mine out there, but for sure, at least half of the people I passed were on intermediate-entry level bikes not really worthy of comparison with my racing bike. From time to time, I'd also catch the impressive mountain biker who obviously managed to swim their way into a big lead on me. Still, I was definitely hammering the bike, and it felt remarkably natural for me, even moreso than my running as of late.

I did get passed by two cyclists on the bike from the wave behind me. One was clearly decked out in elite gear, with a set of $2000 wheels on his racing bike. He was quite strong, and definitely too fast for me to stay with. One other guy was about my age, and very muscular, and riding a standard Cannondale road bike. He too, gradually pulled out of my view. (I got both of them on the run.)

While coming from the rear makes you feel like a rock star because of all the passing you do, it also limits your sense of really competing.For sure, all of the racers near my ability had smoked me so badly on the swim that I was unable to close the gap, and I was sufficiently fast on the bike that the speedsters from the waves behind me could not catch me. I'm really looking forward in the future to getting my swim together so I can really race with guys my speed.

TRANSITION 2 - BIKE TO RUN

This transition is a lot simpler than the swim, and I still managed to bungle it a bit. I was planning to take my feet out from my shoes on the bike, and run it in barefoot, but I completely forgot to do this, and ended up running into the transition area with my bike shoes on, which is very clunky due to the protruding clips on the bottom. I parked my bike, slipped on my shoes, which were already tied, and took off on the run. Immediately, I realized that my race belt which had the race bib number on it, was too loose to run with, as it was slipping down my waist. I tried adjusting it while running, and ended up just undoing the whole thing. The photographer at the run start looked at me with a very puzzled look as I ran by with my race number in my hand. This was definitely NOT my day on transitions! I ended up just tying it around my waist like a karate belt, which ended up working totally fine for the rest of the race.

Bike 14 mi: 47:29, 17.8mph. Not bad for a relatively hilly course. 7/55 AG on the bike.

THE RUN

This was by far the slowest I have ever run in a race, excluding my first two marathons. The course was fairly hilly, but at the start, I could barely get my run to under 8:00min/mile, which is pretty much training pace for me. I must have hammered the bike harder than I thought. On the bright side, I was passing people at the same rate as my bike, and after about half a mile, I think I got to a more reasonable pace for me, which was about 7:00min/mile. After 2 miles, I managed to catch both the cyclists that had passed me. Still, my HR was pretty high, and I just couldn't get the legs to move after the beating they took on the bike. This was surprising, as I'm certain that if I had run the same duration as my bike, I would have been able to do this run leg faster than I did today. The run should be my strongest leg by far, so it was a bit disappointing to me to not even be able to get down to 6:40/mile, a pace which I actually hit routinely on downhills during marathon races.

On the bright side, I have been doing longish runs as of late, so I had no late-run fade, and passed even more people in the final 2 miles. By now, I had dropped pretty much all of the noncompetitive people in the waves that had left before mine, and now was passing triathletes who were clearly in similar category to myself overall, with much fewer women in the mix. Not a single runner passed me, but there was one older runner who managed to maintain a 100meter gap on me until the end, where I closed it to about 10meters.

In all, running after swim/bike ended up being a lot harder than I expected it to be. For sure, I woudl have been in rough, rough shape today had I biked for 30-50 miles and then run a 10k or half-marathon afterwards. We're talking 9min/mile for me, if this had been a longer race. I'm in awe of elite Ironman competitors, who somehow can throw down 2:40-2:50 marathons after biking 100 miles significantly faster than I did today, and swimming miles at a riproaring pace. Amazing stuff.

4.5mi in 32:14, 7:09/mi. 3^rd AG. After a slow start, the run ended up ok after all. Definitely did NOT feel like 7 min/mile!

FINAL THOUGHTS AND PLANS

After a miserable experience on the swim, the day ended up shaping up to be successful, and fun. I was duly humbled by my horrendousness at open-water swimming, though it was be expected, given my complete lack of experience with the wetsuit and OWS. I strongly suspect that even with 3-4 practice sessions, that I will be able to improve my OWS time by 30-50%. I was pleased with my bike leg, which corresponds to the gains I've made on my bike rides, and the run went ok, albeit weaker than I had expected. I think I was also surprised by the end of the day with how long the entire affair took at 1hr 47mins, this puts it into a long-distance race for me (I run a half marathon in about 1hr 30mins) despite its name of being a "sprint" triathlon. Endurance is definitely king in these events, and that may have worked to my advantage late in the race. So while I completely missed my goals of 1) surviving the swim with decent placement and 2) not bungling my transitions, I still somehow managed to place about where I expected to had things gone right.

I'm not sure when my next race is going to be, but for sure, open water wetsuit swim practice in the spring when the season starts up again will be a high priority. I do have a half marathon in March that I would like to have a good showing for, so I will probably increase running mileage at the cost of swim/bike for the next 3-4 months. Regardless, I've definitely been bitten by the tri bug, and expect to have many other races down the road.

Triathlon #1 in the bag!