St. Anthony’s v. 4.0
This past weekend I raced St. Anthony’s for the fourth year in a row. St. A’s is definitely my favorite race – it’s one of the biggest triathlons in the world, the field is always stacked, the course is flat and fast, and it’s right in my home state! It’s also a great way to evaluate fitness in the early season. The course never changes so I can make direct comparisons year-over year.
So how did it go? Well, the swim was rough – so rough, in fact, that the entire swim for the age group race was canceled! The professionals still got to swim but I definitely felt sorry for all of the amateurs. Duathlons suck! But I agree with the decision made by race director Philip Lahaye – that water was harsh! I got knocked around quite a bit. Once out of the water, though, I think I put together a pretty good race. My 57:30 on the bike was the best 40K I’ve ever ridden in a non-draft race (yes, I rode a 56:22 in 2008, but so many guys came together into a legal non-draft stagger that I don’t really consider that a solo ride). I ran up into the top 10 with a 32:14 10K that definitely exceeded expectations, fully 58 seconds faster than last year.
Having a trainer in transition is sweet when they make you put bikes in transition the day before.
Into T2.
Second fastest run of the day!
It’s funny because the age groupers got these as awards, too.
I’m Spoiled
Chula Vista is awesome. My time here is almost up and I will soon be moving to my “long term” resident location at the Olympic training center in Colorado Springs, and even though Colorado Springs is equally awesome I will be the first to admit that I will miss training in Chula. The warm San Diego weather, the friendly people, and most of all the little training group we have had out here since early January will be the things I miss the most (we have had as many as eight triathletes out here although we are currently down to four – Ethan Brown, Steve Sexton, Jen Spieldenner and me).
Training in Chula Vista was my first opportunity to devote myself “full time” to triathlon training and I believe I developed a lot as an athlete. I think I am a bit spoiled now, though. At this time last year I was trying to combine a full early season racing schedule with trying to graduate from college. OK, I wasn’t trying very hard to graduate, but with final exams and final projects school still took up a lot of my time. Training at the OTC is completely different – instead of trying to “fit” my training around other parts of my life, training is my life and everything else comes second. So what is it like to train out here? Check out the pics below. Hopefully I captured a little bit about how things work out here.
Otay Lakes Road – the only place around here to do “quality” riding. But thirty minutes of flat riding out on Otay gives access to some great climbs or rolling hills.
The track is sweet and the scenery isn’t bad, either.
The cafeteria is my favorite place on campus! This breakfast made me very happy.
The sports med building is another place I spend a lot of my time. This is the Normatech MVP unit. It uses air pressure to provide compression. I have it set at 80 mm Hg. 15 or 30 minutes using this and it doesn’t even feel like I did a workout.
The cold tank. 55 degrees.
Joey the therapy dog comes every Friday. He is like the OTC’s collective pet. He knows like 57 tricks or something sweet like that.
He even gets his own ID card!
The Alter-G treadmill – it allows you to run at certain percentages of your body weight – down to 20%. It’s great for injured athletes or people like me who want to get in a few extra miles without the leg pounding. Apparently my legs were going too fast to be captured by the phone’s camera.
So what effect will all of this great training have on my triathlon season in 2009? So far it seems to be going pretty well. With some higher priority races coming up I’ll find out soon!
Carlsbad 5000 – What Makes It So Fast?
The Carlsbad 5000 claims to be the “world’s fastest 5K,” and having raced this 5K road race yesterday I can say that it is very fast. I ran a PR of 15:12, more than a half minute faster than my previous best road time of 15:51. During the race I think I also set a PR in every distance from the 40 yard dash all the way to 5K – the race started in a dead sprint for the first turn, I ran through the mile in the front group in 4:42, hit two miles at 9:40, and three miles around 14:42. In retrospect it was a lot of fun to run the race in that manner (red lining from the gun), but during the race it kind of sucked. The winner of the pro men’s race ran a 13:19, 19 seconds away from the road 5K world record of 13:00 set at Carlsbad in 2000. Jarrod Shoemaker ran a blistering 14:13 to take 14th in the men’s pro race. In the end, though, the Carlsbad 5000 is just another road 5K – so what makes this course so fast?
Ethan made a good point that the course is actually slightly undulating and this makes it faster. As you run the course you work different muscles going up the slight uphill portions than on the slight downhill portions. Consequently certain muscles are “resting” while others are working, making the runners fatigue less quickly. Another reason is the quality of field – there were over 8,000 runners at the race divided over five races. My race alone (men & women 29 and under) had over 1,700 runners. My time of 15:12 would win 99% of local road races in my home town of Orlando but only got me fifth in my race (13th overall in the age group catagories). I had a group of runners to run with all the way up to around 4K, and this pacing definitely helped me go faster. However, I think that the biggest reason everyone runs fast on this course is that everyone just thinks that the course is fast. Carlsbad is just a normal road 5K course (in fact it has two u-turns that definitely are not fast), but almost everyone goes into the race thinking they are going to run fast and in turn almost everyone does just that!
Mark Fretta leading the men’s 29 and under race in 2006.
Steve, Ethan and I went to hand out awards at the Carlsbad kiddie’s races on Saturday.
Australia
The Mooloolaba World Cup was last weekend. I crashed out. I had a decent swim, a so-so first transition, and then crashed out on the first lap of the bike. It’s tough traveling halfway across the world and coming back with nothing, but overall I’m pretty happy about the way things turned out after crashing: I’m not hurt (x-rays on my right wrist came back as negative for fractures which is awesome!), my bike is mostly functional (I need a new derailleur hanger), and other than a little road rash that’s about all the crash did to me. I’m very lucky – considering the speed I was going when I crashed and the amount of people who subsequently ran over me, I would think I wouldn’t be so well-off.
Anyways, rather than focusing on how I traveled 15,000 miles and came back with nothing but a sprained wrist, I’m going to focus on why Australia was actually a lot of fun:
Mooloolaba is on Australia’s Sunshine Coast. It’s a cool place.
Tim Tams. Amazing. I ate half a box of these after I DNF’d.
Meat pies. It’s a pie but it’s a meal! Delicious.
Matt Chrabot, Ben Collins and I rented an apartment for a week. This means we could cook for ourselves if we wanted. Being that I never get to cook anything anymore (I live at the OTC), I jumped at the chance. I put on my sunglasses because this onion was making my eyes water.
The glasses didn’t work so I busted out the goggles.
On the way back Matt and I got into the Air New Zealand lounge in Sydney. I don’t normally drink champagne at noon on Mondays but it was there so how could I refuse?
