Vineman 70.3 - 1st completed triathlon in two years... swim + bike + blaaahhhhhhhhruuummmpphhhh

First, let me say that this race was a success because.... I finished. Yipeeeeeee! I haven't completed all three disciplines in a triathlon in two years. And, ask anyone, I'm not a big racer, I'd rather just train (i.e. ride my bike), but I really just wanted to finish a damn race!  So, when I managed to register for Vineman (it sold out in 8 minutes), I was looking forward to getting back into the swing of things.

Everything was going along great until I injured my left leg running. Between the beginning of June and race day, I backed off any hard bike training and stopped running. I couldn't even run if I wanted to, the pain was so bad. I couldn't stand on just my left foot without my leg shaking and giving out on me. I had no idea how I was going to get through the run course at the race, but that didn't matter. Last words from my coach were "race aggressive on swim and bike, see how leg feels on run. If any pain, shut it down so New Zealand not compromised". So that became my plan.

The week before the race, I took off work. I really needed a vacation. Working 12 hour days, weekends, 4th of July... It was getting to me. Jaw and I took the RV up the coast and camped, rode a little, walked, slept in, etc. Thursday we came home, I packed up my race junk and we left for Windsor about 3 AM on Friday. Wanting to avoid all the Cali traffic, it was a nice road trip up north. We took some back roads to get to Windsor and it immediately became clear to me why the race is so popular. The area is so incredibly beautiful. Saturday Jaw became sherpa extraordinaire and came with me for a little practice swim, short ride to verify all on the bike was OK and packet pick-up. He was so amazingly supportive through the whole day and my usual pre-race neurosis were less than usual (although he'd probably say I was a wreck :) ).

Race morning - got up early and ate some yummy oatmeal from Thrive Foods Direct. I have been getting my meals delivered from them the past month or so (all gluten free, plant based food - I'm not a vegetarian, but I like eating clean, unprocessed foods and I don't want to cook, so this is a lifesaver for me). Got to the race early to snag a premier parking space (and I had an early wave start). Set up transition with lots of time to spare, so we just hung around and enjoyed the atmosphere.

Swim:
This course suited me for a couple of reasons. The water was as calm as can be and the course is a simple out / back. Some people like it because the water is so shallow you can stand up and walk / rest if you need to, but when I made the turnaround and my hands were hitting the bottom of the river, I found it really annoying and was praying for some deeper water. I had been working on my swim a lot and while my swim time still wasn't stellar, it was my best swim time (time per 100 m) in a race to date (excpet for the half at the Triple T, but I'm convinced that course was waaayyyyyy short). I was feeling very good on the swim. Pulling hard, breathing easy, good technique. I even passed a girl in my wave towards the finish. Woooo! I was hoping for a little better time, but I'll take it. Out of the water, short walk to my bike (longer walk to the bike start) and I was off...
Swim: 37:09 (1:55 / 100 m; 39th in AG)
T1: 3:38

Bike:
Beautiful course!!! The weather was mostly overcast the entire ride, which helped me tremendously. I don't do well in the heat. I tried to settle in, but was anxious to get off the main road and make the sharp turn into the backcountry. I got to the turn and managed OK, but then dropped my chain on the 1st big steep climb. Instead of losing it, I just did a quick glance behind me, turned around back to the bottom of the hill, re-set my chain and up I went. No worries - rookie mistake, but all is OK. Now, I tried to settle in, but the roads are very very very bumpy and everything on my bike was rattling. So, I stopped briefly to check my between the bars aero bottle and sure enough, the velcro (I recently purchased a Profile Design HC Aero Mount / Bottle) was loose. So, I tightened that up and NOW, I was ready to rock-n-roll. Still, the roads were very very very bumpy, but damn beautiful so no reason to get all upset. Finally around mile 40 something, the roads cleaned up a bit and just my luck, I hit one little bump and my bottle finally flew out of the holder. Oh crap - I was too in the zone to go chase it down and frankly, I think it fell off the overpass into the valley below. I was past all the aid stations, but had about 1/2 bottle of water with me so figured that was good enough.

Right after that, something big smacked me in the lip and I almost fell off my bike. I don't know if it was a bee or a rock or some other bug, but my lip swelled up (hello free botox) and hurt like hell. Ok - this is fun!!!! Anywho, made my way to transition, happy-ish w/ my bike time ( was hoping to average 20 mph, but 19.7 is good). I had a long way to walk to rack my bike, so I took off my bike shoes right after the bike dismount line and...... jogged to my transition area. Wait - I'm "running". Weeeeee!
Bike: 2:49:47 (19.79 mph; 13th in AG)
T2: 5:24 (I was in no rush... :) )

Run:
Beautiful Course!!! I put on my pillow shoes (i.e. Hoka's) and actually started running out of transition. But just past mile 1, my leg reminded me that it was not happy and I came to a screeching halt. It's the type of pain that stops you dead in your tracks. I talked to my leg... told it just get me jogging from aid station to aid station and I'll let you rest and walk through each aid station. This worked a bit, but at some points the pain was too much to handle and I walked some between aid stations as well. As my coach said, if it was too much, shut it down so I can train properly for IM New Zealand. At some point while I was hobbling along, I noticed my toes were on fire and hurting, but too scared to stop and take off my shoes, I just put that out of my brain. I saw my good friend Jay from Chi town around mile 10-ish... he looked good and strong and gave me a bit of energy boost (thank you Jay!) Around mile 11 or so, I figured I could be done in 20 minutes so I started jogging and told myself it's flat and straight to the finish so just try to get in some sort of rhythm and get 'er done. And so I did. I got passed by so many people on the run course, but it didn't bother me. This wasn't a race for time.

Run: 2:30:21 (11:28 min / mile; 54th in AG)
Total: 6:06:19

Side notes:
I didn't have any GI issues at this race. I don't know if it's due to changing my diet or being in a better mental state of mind, but I was very pleased with this.

Since starting triathlon in '06, I've only done four other half ironman races and this time was actually my fastest. My other halves were: American TTT in 2010 (6:21), Pucon Chile in 2009 (6:20), Las Vegas Half in 2007 (6:16) and Steelhead in 2006 (6:06:37). I sort of wonder what I can do when I'm actually not hurt...

Omelette Express in Windsor makes the most amazing day-after race omelettes you'll ever eat!

Cheers and XO!
Mer

Rambling thoughts while getting oil changed in preparation for road trip to Vineman 70.3

Hi!!! It's been so long since I wrote a blog post thingy and I thought since I'm sitting in the oil change place not doing anything productive, it's the perfect time to write.

This weekend is Vineman 70.3. I don't remember when I signed up, other than this silly race sold out in about 0.5 seconds. I haven't done a complete triathlon since August 2011, and since I signed up for Ironman New Zealand I thought I should do a half just to get back into race mode.

My training had been going well and I was up to running 9 miles. I sat down with my coach and we had a plan that included working with his wife (former all-American record holding swimmer) to fix my swim technique and build some strength. My biking was going well, watts creeping back up and I was getting comfy again on the Tri bike. But as luck would have it, I went out for a run back on June 2nd, and my whole left leg just collapsed and I nearly fell.

So, training went on a bit of a hold while I rested and tried to figure out what happened. Sports Dr. diagnosed the injury as IT Band Syndrome and basically said I could forget about running. I accepted that for a few days, then got depressed, then got angry. I went to my ART guy and endured some excruciating pain, but we pinpointed the problem to my lower hamstring. I didn't run (hello aqua jogging!!) and laid off biking hills and hard intervals.

Now Vineman is three days away. Yesterday I ran for 20 minutes. There was some pain, but it was manageable and felt OK if I mixed in some sideways skipping, backwards jogging and walking.

So as I sit here at the oil change place, I'm trying to come up with a game plan for the race. So far, I've got "swim as hard as I can". After that I don't know. I'd like to run and finish the whole race. In order to do that, I need to bike pretty conservatively. I don't really know how to bike conservatively in a race though. Even when I'm not injured, I always bike too hard and blow up on the run. Maybe for this race though, I should put my ego behind me and bike "easy-ish" so that I can at least finish. On the other hand, maybe I should bike my brains out, live in the moment and worry about the run when the run happens. After all, I'm a biker not a runner, dammit!

I have a feeling my game plan will take shape on race day. If you see or hear about some crazy girl sideways skipping out of transition or backwards jogging out on the run course, that would be me.  I'll post an update after the race - stay tuned!

xo
Mer-OoO