The past two weeks, I’ve done a couple of “shorter” triathlons – Olympic distance events. These feature a 1500 meter swim, 40K (25 mile) bike, and a 10K (6 mile) run. With the shorter time involved, and the races starting at 7 and finishing by 9:30 in the morning, here in the Pacific Northwest, even on a sunny day, hydration and nutrition concerns (my dysphagia) are a non-issue.
I was less concerned about my competitive placement than about how I felt during and after each race. I did get a 1st and a 2nd place; my times were probably 10% slower swimming, 3 % slower biking, and 5% slower running than similar races last summer. But I felt GREAT while doing the races. I had no pains or cramps in my arms while I swam. I could keep my bike effort strong the whole way. And I actually enjoyed sweating and grinding up (and down) the hills on the run.
The first race was the “Benaroya Seafair Triathlon”. This is a pretty big race, with 400 people in the Olympic distance, and another 6-700 doing the sprint (half-Oly) version, all out on the course at the same time. These shorter races usually feature “wave” starts, with about 50-100 people setting off into the water at a time, to spread things out a bit. The swim was in Lake Washington, in a protected little alcove next to a peninsula jutting out into the lake. Clean water, clear sky, no crowd – just a cruise for me in 28:43, compared to the 26:30-27:30 I would usually do this distance before my accident. It gave me a powerful boost of confidence to swim better than 2 minutes per 100 meters, after my personal disaster in Lake Coeur d’Alene last month. I’m starting to understand and appreciate my new, slower swim pace, and feel the strength, not the weakness in my stroke.
The bike heads along the Lake for a mile, then up onto the I-90 bridge over Lake Washington, taking over the car pool lanes which run on a separate track in the middle of the freeway. We went thru two tunnels, and turned around right next to the baseball and football stadia in downtown Seattle. You’d think a trip across the lake on a floating bridge would be flat, but there were plenty of “hills” as the road gets up from the lake to the land at either end. I was only able to get my intensity factor up to 0.89, instead of the 0.92 I should be able to do in one of these races. But I had been training pretty hard thru the day before the race. My speed was 20.7 mph; last year I went 20.6 and 21.2 in the two Olys I did.
Even though I hate to run in training, and I’m not really a fan of running races, I love finishing off a triathlon with a good, strong, sweaty run. Especially when I pass a gazillion people along the way. But my times were kinda slow, 7:58 min/mile. Last year I did these races in 7:06, but then triathlon courses are notoriously inaccurate in their announced distances. While I can get a good gauge of the distance with the cyclometer on my bike, I do not use a GPS pace watch during the run, which would give me an accurate distance. Maybe I’ll start doing that?
The following week, it was the Federal Escape, a race I did the year before. So I had times to compare. But the swim was shorter than last year; comparing my times to others who did both this and last year, it looks like I was going at the same pace as the week before. On the bike, I went 20 mph, compared to 20.6 the year before. And my run was 3:30 slower, on the same course. And I only got 2nd place, after wining a trophy last year.
But, strangely, I felt great about these races. I think what I needed was just to get from the beach to the finish line without any internal agony or drama. I call it getting my race mojo back. I really wasn’t ready to race at IM Coeur d’Alene, and didn’t feel at all successful. I needed to get some internal feeling that I am capable of working hard from start to finish. So I went into these races just trying to keep the effort level up above what I’ve been doing in training, and try to pace it so I would finish feeling tired, but fresh and happy. I succeeded, and now I think I can start to try and find a higher level of mojo, the one where I end up feeling like I’ve really put an effort in, rather than just did a pleasantly hard but not exhausting triathlon. The difference between treating it as a race, rather than an event.
I felt so good about it, I took last year’s race bibs off my door, and put up this year’s, something I usually do at the start of the season (November or December).