Mooseman Half - June 8, 2008

Results: 5:07:32, 84th OA out of 723, 5th AG M25-29 out of 36

This was my first half ironman event and I was so nervous and anxious the week leading up to this event that I never fell into a deep sleep all week. The worst was that by the middle of the week they were predicting weather in the 90's for race day. Needless to say the temperature reached 89, which was 1 degree of from the the record high up there. But on the course the temperature easily felt like it was in the middle 90's if not hotter with the dew point and humidity. This was the race I had been training for since the middle of January and the only downside was that I wasn't able to get in my long ride until race day. Needless to say I'm pretty happy with my performance considering the heat conditions and the hilly course. I was predicting myself to finish in around 5 hours, but 7 minutes over my predicted time for the race conditions I'm not going to worry about.

1.2 Mile Swim: 31:32 (151th OA, 10th AG)

The water was 62 on race day which was very chilly considering I have a wetsuit that doesn't cover my arms. The swim start was an in water start about waist deep. I had predicted that I would finish the swim in 30 minutes to 34 minutes. I was in the first swim wave, which included the Elite/Pro's and males 34 and under. It was really awesome to be starting the swim wave with the Elites in the front. The swim was pretty uneventful and there isn't much to report here. The worst part of this was that going into T1 and to the Wetsuit Strippers was that my hamstrings tightened so bad that I couldn't move! I was screaming in pain it was that bad! I'm not sure if it had something to do with swimming in the cold water or not, but it was painful! I would say that swimming is my 2nd best discipline in triathlon, but isn't that great for me this year I think. Part of this could be that I gave up lifting weights about half way through my training plan, which I think affected my swim time.

56 Mile Bike: 2:50:28, 19.7 mph (148th OA, 10th AG)

I knew the bike leg was going to be my worst event of the day and was something I knew I was going to suffer through after the first loop. The course was a 28 mile, 2 loop course that had 1 very gnarly hill and a bunch of rolling hills. I was very surprised that I ended up being ahead of a few people in the final results considering this is not my strongest leg. The first 4 miles of this course had some very rough road conditions from the bad winter here in New England. In fact for must of the course there was very few areas to actually ride in the aero position. Another reason I didn't want to ride aero was due to the fact I didn't want to snap my aerobars again! The first loop of the bike went well. I brought with me on the bike leg, 1 bottle of Cytomax, 1 bottle of Monster Energy Drink mixed with Gatorade, 1 Bottle of Water and 5 Hammer Gels. Needless to say I ended up going thru my water, Cytomax and the 4 gels in the first loop and ended up picking up a few waters, 1 gel and gatorade endurance formula during the rest of the bike. I had predicted to finish the bike in 3 hours so I was happy to finish 10 minutes faster than what I had predicted considering the hills.

13.1 Mile Run: 1:40:10, (59th OA, 2nd AG)

Going into T2 I was expecting my legs to cramp up heading into the run and have that awkward feeling, but they didn't. I started out my first mile very strong and much better than I had expected, a 5:50 first mile! After I saw that on my watch, my quads started to cramp and gave up on me, so I started to walk. I hit the first aid station and picked up water and gatoride. By the time I got to the run, the heat was starting to get really bad! There were plenty of aid stations on this out and back run course, which was great! I ended up hitting all the aid stations for the sponges and the occasional hose down from the neighbors that lined the course. The run only had 1 real major hill with 1 small hill. I ended up having to walk both of these hills because my legs were absolutely dead. I can't even count how many times I ended up walking the run. It was awful because I have never ever walked a run in training, needless to say a race! I was hoping to run a much better half, but with the weather and the fact that I hadn't done a long bike ride prior to the half; pretty much killed my run leg even though I ended up having the 59th Overall fastest run time.

Post Race / Comments:

Keith Jordan, the race director, puts on one great event! They had plenty to do post race for athletes as far as food, drinks, etc. and from what my parents and Jess said there was plenty going on during the race. It was also great that Jess and my parents were up there to share with me my great accomplishment in my First Half Ironman.

Week 20 - Race Week

Coming into Week 20 was great after having one last week of quality training in Week 19 and I was really looking forward to the up coming Half this weekend. I was definitely worried about the heat they had predicted for the weekend, since it was suppose to be in the 90’s. With my bike in the shop until Wednesday of this week, I only went out for one, 5 mile ride to see if everything was working okay. The reason for the ride was to test my race day setup. I ended up renting a set of Zipp 606 wheels for Mooseman. It was a good thing I went out for this short ride because I ended up having to run back to the bike shop on Saturday morning as soon as they opened. I had allot of front end vibration at only 15 mph and anything above that I thought I was going to dump the bike. After they took a look at it, for some reason there was an 'extra piece' of metal in the headset. There's nothing like a little last minute stress going into the race weekend!

This past week was a great taper week with only 2 days of swimming and 1 day of running. I was supposed to bike 3 times this week, but because the bike was in the shop I wasn't able to get the training in.

Here are the totals for this week (not including the race):

• Swim - 3,168 yards
• Bike - 0 miles
• Run - 5.93 miles

Week 19 - Taper

Well this was my first week of my two week taper and it's great to be that much closer to race day. This week was pretty productive considering it was my taper week. The downside was that I have no biking miles this week since I was waiting for my replacement aerobars and then dropping the bike off at the shop to get them installed. The good thing is I'll have the bike back in time for the race and that is all that counts. I was also able to get in a long run of 10.2 miles, even though it was a littler slower (a 6:40 per mile pace) than my normal training pace (6:09 per mile pace), it was still great to get out for my 1st long run since my half marathon in April.

Here are tht totals for Week 19:

• Swim - 7,084 yards
• Bike - 0 miles
• Run - 21.46 miles

Week 18 - Recap

Well Week 18 was eventful as you could tell from my previous post. This week was also my first open water swim in Stiles Pond in Boxford, MA. The open water swim had to have been the coldest swim I've ever been on. We were told the water temperature was 62 degrees, but it felt more like 52! I'll be looking forward to Week 19 and 20 with my 2 week taper for my 1st Half Ironman race on June 8th, Mooseman. Since I wasn't able to get my 60 mile ride in, my bike mileage is low this week. My running mileage is also low this week since I've been dealing with some achilles tendon tightness and soreness/tenderness. I was able to make it to the Orthopedic doctor on Thursday, May 22 and he told me that as long as I stretch it before and after my workouts and ice it after, I should be fine for my half. He told me that I'm just generally tight and that if I have tight hamstrings, then that will result in trouble with my achilles tendons. Along with stretching them out twice a day I was also taking ibuprofen for a few days to relieve any inflammation. As of this post, I'm back to my normal running and my achilles are much better. I'm back to the foam roller for my achilles tendons and since I'm using the roller again, I figured I should roll out my IT bands even though I haven't had any trouble with them for quite come time.

Here are the totals for Week 18:

• Swim - 5,850 yards
• Bike - 56.12 miles
• Run - 12.68 miles

Memorial Day Weekend - 60 mile ride....

Well, as I wrote about in my last post I was supposed to ride 60 miles this past weekend. I woke up on Saturday morning and meet up with TriFury for the scheduled 7:30am group ride at the Herman Youth Center in N. Andover, MA. I got there a little early at 7am, so that I could stretch out and pound my can of Monster Khaos for my ride. After stretching out, I felt great and the weather was turning out to be better than expected. The group ride started out a little after 7:30am and we were off. I took an early lead from the group and ended up pulling away from the group and was about 4-5 minutes ahead of the person behind me. I was having a great ride and I was averaging 21 mph. I made it 25 miles in and the worst happened......My new Visiontech TriMax Plus Flat aerobars ended up breaking. My left aerobar extension ended up snapping off causing me to loose control of the bike. The good thing was that I wasn't around anyone else. After loosing control of my bike going just over 20 mph, I veered off the road to the right, went up about a 4 foot embankment, which ended up slowing me down a bit. Once I was up the embankment I ended up flipping head over heals off the handlebars and rolled down the 4 foot embankment with the bike crashing on top of me in the middle of the road. Luckily, I crashed in front of someones house and they came running out to see if I was okay. Apparently, they called out after I crashed, but I was so concerned about how I was and taking an inventory of what happened to me and what happened to the bike that I didn't even hear them. All and all the only damage to the bike was the aerobars and everything else was fine. I ended up with a bruise the size of bike pedal on my left calf and a couple of cuts on my left knee and some road rash on my butt. I was happy that the crash wasn't that bad since things could have ended up much worse. I'd like to thank the good samaritan, whose house I crashed in front of, who gave me a ride back to my car, which was only 2 miles away after the whole incident. After getting back to my car I called it a day and went home to run 6 miles later that afternoon without incident.

Here are some pictures of what happened to the bike below.

Week 16 & 17 - Recap

Week 16 was a recovery week and I was able to get 2 - 20 mile rides in, not including my JCC race on Mother's Day. As of this post, I still have yet to get in a 50 - 60 mile bike ride, which will be happening this coming Memorial Day weekend. There isn't really anything significant to report for Week 16 other than the JCC Sprint Tri that I posted about previously.

Here are my totals for Week 16;

• Swim - 3,716 yards
• Bike - 53.24 miles
• Run - 15.6 miles

Week 17 was a complete disaster! Come Monday, May 12, I was fine when I went to work and as the day went on I seemed to feel worse and worse. I ended up taking the whole week off from training since I was sick with a bad head cold and running a fever over a few of the days last week. This really through a loop in my training plan since this week was my 2nd weak in the peak phase and I was hoping to get in my long ride and long run in this week. To finish off the week I decided to get a professional massage and ever since the massage I've been dealing with some morning stiffness in my right Achilles tendon. Hopefully this won't continue to bother me and I'll be able to continue my training for Week 18. I'll write more about this after I see the doctor this Friday, May 23.

Here are my totals for Week 17:

• Swim, Bike, Run - ZERO

JCC Triathlon by the Sea - 2008 Race Report

Official Results - 51:30, 3rd Overall out of 248, 1st M25-29 out of 10

Pre-Race: The day before Jess and I decided to drive the course, since someone from TriFury was kinda enough to send out a pre-race report on the road conditions, but I wanted to check them out for myself. Sure enough the roads were full of potholes and there were alot of turns. There were a couple of areas that were tricky if there wasn't anyone directing. The run also consisted of alot of turns, but was pretty flat except for one hill about 3/4 of a mile in. The swim was going to be interesting as well since it was a pool start. It started out that you swam down the first lane and then the next 4 lanes you swam both up and down and then the last lane you swam down and exited out the door and ran out to the transition area.

Well the night before we were in bed early at 9pm and up at 4:30am so we could be there by 6:30am to check-in and get my transition area set-up. I slept great for about 4 hours and didn't have the race on my mind at all since I've done a few of these last year. Then for some reason I woke up at about midnight and from then on I was having nightmares that I screwed up the swim and only did half the distance. Then, the next 2 dreams consisted of getting lost and taking the wrong turn and the last one being that I crashed hitting a huge pothole. My last dream then consisted that I took a wrong turn on the run. Needless to say after all these dreams last night I was a little nervous and anxious this morning.

Swim: 3:45, 6th OA, 1st AG

Well the swim was based on the seeded time that you had to submit when you registered for the race. The good thing was that I originally submitted a slower time of 4:30 and then changed it to 4:10, but needless to say that was to slow as well. Our race numbers were based on when we would be starting the swim. I was number 66 and I didn't enter the water for some time. They started people off with a 15 second gap per person so that you hopefully wouldn't have to pass anyone. Well sure enough, I caught the girl in front of me in the 2nd lane and then got tied up behind 2 people in the 3rd lane. I was able to pass them in the 2nd to last lane, but it cost me about 15-20 seconds if not more having to slow down behind them so that I could safely pass them since I had to pass them while people were swimming at me. I was also able to catch someone in the last lane as well. My enter to exit time from the pool was 3:38, but because the timing mat was so far from the pool, my official time was 3:45.

Bike: 31:08 (20.2 mph) 11th OA, 1st AG

I was worried how I was going to make out on the bike, not because of mileage, but because of the weather. It was cold this morning, but by the time I got out of the pool and back outside it wasn't that bad. I ended up wearing my tri top for the swim and I wasn't sure if that was going to cost me and leave me cold on the bike. Sure enough it was perfect on the bike with only my feet getting cold. My overall average speed is slow because this includes my transition time to my run. I ended up averaging 22.0mph according to my bike computer and finished the bike in 28:38. My transition time took me awhile because for some reason I tried to run with my aero helmet on, which needless to say, was pretty funny!

Run: 16:38 (5:33), 1st OA, 1st AG

Running has been my strong point, since this is the background I came from before starting triathlons. I had no idea I was going to dominate the run and have the fastest run of the day by almost a minute. (Beating elite triathlete Dean Phillips.) The run was mostly flat with only 1 hill at the 3/4 mile mark. This was where I caught alot of people before hitting the finish line. The only problem I had during the run was some cramping because instead of bringing water with me on bike, I brought with me my Cytomax drink. The cramps weren't bad enough to slow me down though.

All and all it was an awesome race since I was able to use some of my new gear. This was the first race that I was able to try out my new Vision Tech TriMax Plus Flat aerobars and the 2nd time I was able to use my Sidi T-1 shoes and my new Guru Advantage 2 Helmet. With it being Mother's Day, my parents were able to make it to the race today, which was great! Then afterwards the Ellis's were able to finally meet Jess's Parent's for the first time. It was a good day for racing and a great Mother's day for both Mom's.