After twelve weeks of training, I did my second open-water triathlon at the Tarpon Springs Triathlon in Tarpon Springs, Florida.

The Lead-Up

I flew in 4 days before the race. That day I put together my bike and (after a bit of an adventure to get a pump that could pump to 109 PSI), I did a very swift test ride to make sure everything was working on the bike.

Two days before the race I was scheduled for a pickup run. I went to the trail by my parents house and after that run I felt pretty good.

The day before the race, I was scheduled for an easy bike ride. I rode my bike for 30 minutes on a nice, paved, mostly flat trail near my parents’ house. It was the first time I was shipping my bike for a race, so it was a good check to make sure everything was working on a larger scale than the quick bike check when I first arrived. Packet pickup was at a bike shop that evening, so I figured I could always take the bike in if something went awry. It was a good ride that made me feel pretty good about my readiness level for the race.

After packet pickup I went out for a nice dinner of fresh-caught grouper with my mom and Denny, a family friend who would also be supporting me at the race. When I got home I put the sticker on my bike and helmet and finalized packing. When I bought my bike bag from Scicon it was on sale and came with a free bookbag; I used it to pack everything I would need at transition. I got into bed at 2130 and was asleep by 2200 according to my watch.

Day of the Race

The organizers had warned that the parking was very limited and likely to fill up by 0600. I knew I wanted to try and get to transition around the time it opened at 0545 to get organized and have time to warm up before my group start time. I woke up at 0430, having slept through the night without interruption. It was the best sleep I’ve ever had before a race. I had breakfast - cereal and tea, as usual - and was out the door by 0500.

Once I got to the venue, it was a little disorienting that it was still dark out. In fact, the sun came up JUST before the race started at 0700. After getting my things setu up in the transition area, I went to confirm the swim course with one of the race volunteers. (There was a little bit of a contradiction between the rotary club’s site and the race organizer’s site) Then, after talking to my mom and Denny for a little bit, I started doing my active warm-up stretches.

The Race

Swim

The Olympic distance swimmers went first since they were going though the swim course twice. It was beneficial to see them go through the swim course to help visualize exactly how it was laid out.

Earlier that morning, while waiting in line for the restrooms, I spoke to someone who had done this Triathlon before. He warned me that this beach had a lot of beach grass and that it would be worse today because of the low tide. Despite that conversation, I couldn’t be prepared for the amount of ocean grass at this beach. My previous ocean triathlon was at a beach my family frequents and I was used to the beaches around Clearwater. This one had a thick, continuous lawn of ocean grass throughout the entire course. Even though I wasn’t scared, intellectually or consciously, my subconscious felt this primal fear as I started to swim. Not only was there basically a forest in every direction, but also the water was dark and occluded. The only indication anyone else was swimming with me was the splash and bubbles I would see when they would kick…if they were close enough for me to even see the bubbles. At the previous beaches I’d swam in, I could see to the floor and could see for a long distance in either direction. This just wrecked me for the first quarter of the swim. I kept looking up to align myself to the buoy and I was breathing horribly, which put me in a terrible place aerobically. I was thinking I was going to have a horrible race, when I was winded just getting to that first buoy.

However, as I rounded the buoy, my brain finally stopped being my worst enemy. My stroke lengthened out and became efficient. I started breathing normally again. I regained a lot of my strength.

One of the big complaints in open water swims (vs pool swims) is that people can be all over the place. You can crash into folks or get hit. So far, I’ve been pretty lucky with all of that. The only annoying thing that happened to me is that in the final stretch the guy to my left kept cutting me off. I’d catch up to him and then he’d speed up and swim in front of me. I couldn’t tell if he was just course-correcting because we were swimming into the sun. Every time I looked up I couldn’t see where we were relative to the exit. We came out pretty well aligned to the exit, so maybe it’s a good thing he kept forcing me to the right, but it was still a little annoying.

I came out of the water feeling a tad too exhausted for the events still ahead of me and I was actively calming myself as I entered transition and started putting on my bike shoes.

Cycling

I started off the cycling portion slightly winded, but I’ve never found cycling to be aerobically hard. My quads start killing me long before I start running out of breath. A little after leaving the causeway, my breathing evened out and I started going faster and faster. Just like the Columbia Association Triathlon I didn’t have more than a handful of folks pass me on the bike. (This is something I was watching out for due to how badly I kept getting lapped during my first Triathlon) On the contrary, I was consistently passing lots of others. Looking back, I think I could have probably pushed myself slightly harder on the bike.

However, there were a few things keeping me from going faster. First of all, the course was quite a bit more winding than any other course I’d done. Dunedin was an out and back course with the bike and the Columbia Association Tri was around a set of city blocks (essentially a giant square). This course went throughout the city of Tarpon Springs, so there were lots of turns and lots of twisty paths from about the halfway point until the end of the bike course. Second, they made a very big deal about the US Triathlon drafting rules so I tried my best to either pass quickly or hang back. There were a few times where either the road or the way I was feeling made hanging back a better choice than trying to pass in the moment. That said, I did end up with a “rival” in orange and blue who kept see-sawing with me during the cycling portion. I would pass him when we were climbing the (small) hills. I was used to much higher hills from my training so it was easy for me to pass him. But I used downhill portions as a chance to rest my legs and to lift up off the seat and he would pass me there. In the end, we had a bunch of curves AND I wanted to make sure I could get off the bike at the dismount area without any issues (I had new cleats the were requiring a bit more force to unclip) so I just let him stay ahead of me there.

Run

During the second transition I used my lessons learned from this summer and did not waste time trying to remove my cycling gloves. Annoyingly, my fingers cramped up and it took me 3 tries to tie my left shoe. (I really need to learn the runner’s knots) After that I was out of transition. I didn’t feel good at first. I was running about an 8:30/mile and felt (for either the first time in any race or one of the very rare times) like throwing up and a teeny bit of bile came up. However, as I got off the causeway and into the park, I found a second wind and started slowly going faster and faster. I didn’t want to push myself too hard, but every time I looked at my watch I was going just a tiny bit faster. By my last mile I was going 7:30.

Stats and Maps

First a screenshot of the website:

Apparently I missed 2nd place by 11 seconds!

Now in table format:

Chip time: 1:09:46.3

A few things:

• my bike time was 5 MINUTES faster than this summer
• The run was just one minute slower
• the swim difference probably comes from having to run into/out of the beach

Per event stats:

Swimming:

• max stroke rate: 46 spm
• average pace: 1:41/100yd
• average heart rate: 143 bpm
• max heart rate: 161 bpm

Cycling

• average speed: 19.2 MPH
• max speed: 24.6 MPH
• average heart rate: 147 bpm
• max heart rate: 156 bpm

Run

• average pace: 7:43/mile
• max pace: 4:55 /mile
• average heart rate: 153 bpm
• max heart rate: 168 bpm

Notice the huge jump in pace and heart rate as I sprinted to the finish line.

Post Race Thoughts

First, I want to start with the part that made me incredibly happy. For the first time in any race I’ve done - runnning, duathlon, or triathlon - I made the podium! It was incredible to get 3rd place in my age group. When I saw that on the race results I couldn’t believe it. I thought it was awesome that I got 18th in the men’s age group heat, but when someone explained the format they were using on the sheet and that it meant I’d gotten 3rd place for my age group I didn’t believe it! In fact, I’ve been in races where they have the results web page synced up via 5G and are updating the website in real time and I’ve seen my rank fall in real time. (It happened at the Columbia Association race and it bummed me out a bit) So I didn’t believe it.

The funny thing is that after the race, but before results were posted, I went to go stretch and use my massage gun, which we’d left in the car. It was also a time to catch up with my wife and kids, who were back home. My mom was going to leave her camera in the car and I told her, “what if I place?” And she looked at me like, “yeah right”. And I didn’t really believe it either, but thought maybe? And then when I actually went to check the results and saw that I was 3rd place, I couldn’t believe it! So the whole time we were watching the awards ceremony, I kept thinking they were going to bump me down to 4th or lower. It was so surreal when they called me up to the podium!

Second, what has somewhat tempered my enthusiasm at placing in my age group (in which I’m amongst the oldest!), is that my time is nearly identical to the Columbia Association race that I hadn’t even trained for. I’ve been training for 12 weeks! But I technically had a 1 minute slower race. So, how should I look at this? Well, one thing I could say is that I have a very high general fitness level. Training didn’t happen to raise my fitness level, but maybe allowed me to hone my bike technique as well as praticing brick workouts where I run right after the bike. Another possibility is that I should have pushed myself a bit more on this race. I don’t think I could have done that on the swim without bad consequences for the rest of the race (although a better start could have reseved a bit more energy). However, on the bike, once I felt good I could have tried pushing a bit more. Or during the run I could have tried forcing my legs to go a little faster a little sooner. But, there’s also the fact that I’m not doing an apples-to-apples comparison here. The Columbia Race had me jumping straight into a pool. There was no part where I was running through the shallow water to get to the swim or get out of the swim. Also, the transition area at Tarpon was on asphault while it was grass in Columbia. (It felt painful to try and run too hard barefoot on pavement) So, maybe, unless I do a step-change in my level of competition, perhaps I’m just going to be tinkering around the edges of 1:08/1:09 for the race. (And I’ll be getting older each time and so, naturally, have to work harder just to maintain the same score)

The reason for this dissonance is key to the way I view competition. I don’t really race against others because I’m usually nowhere near contention. So I race against my previous time. Having fallen a little short there, therefore, takes away a little from getting 3rd. After all, next year I could run exactly the same time and get 1,2, 3, or even 10th, depending on my competition. Only racing against myself can be a “scientific” result because I’m a constant while my competition is not.

However, as I write this blog post, the feeling of happiness that I was able to actually be one of the top three for once in my life is winning out. And I never thought I’d be here when I first started running, thanks to the Red Hat Summit 5k

Special thanks to Mom and Denny for waking up early and coming to support me and take awesome photos.

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