2 for 1 Race Recaps! v.2, or Why I Need A New Wetsuit

In a nod to attempted efficiency (or laziness), I decided to do a post with 2 race updates again as opposed to one blog post per race.

Actually, I was really busy last week, so I put this off a few days...

Anyway, let's get started, shall we?

Big Easy Sprint Triathlon

This was to be my first Triathlon of the season.  After last year's miserable experience in the water, I spent the bulk of my summer cross-training efforts in a pool at Pelican Athletic Club following a couple different Swim Smooth training programs in an effort to not be such an awful swimmer.  I was hoping for redemption from last year's race where I was third to last in the swim leg.

But... the Polar Vortex happened.

Last year, the New Orleans Triathlon/Big Easy Sprint was held the last weekend of May.  This year, the race director moved it up to the last weekend in March and billed it as a "warmup" for Ironman New Orleans 70.3  Normally that's not an issue because by late March, we're experiencing some pretty nice weather on a regular basis which would make for a nice wetsuit legal swim and a comfortable bike and run.  But the screwy winter weather the country has experienced this year made that not the case.

For the first time in something like 12 years, we didn't have a day over 80 degrees for the entire month of March.  Even Mardi Gras day in early March was below 40 degrees the entire day.  That meant the water temperature of Lake Pontchartrain stayed unseasonably cold through March.  Throughout the month, I had been watching the water temperatures posted at saveourlake.org and even 2 weeks before the race, temps at the closest monitoring station to the harbor were below 60 degrees.  I was worried. The last report before the race put the water at 61 degrees, which for me, is unbearably cold.

Then if that wasn't enough, the morning of the race it was in the low 40's with a strong northeast wind causing whitecaps on the lake.  I was 50/50 on even showing up in the days leading up to the race, but decided that morning to make the drive to the race site and make a determination there.

When I got to the site, the Race Director was making the pre-race announcements on a PA and included the words "if you're opting out of the swim..."  I immediately made up my mind to opt out of the swim and just race the bike and run legs.  It was cold and windy and I was already miserable.  They set up a "non-swim" corral and had us wait there until our swim leg people were coming out of the water before letting us go into transition to get on our bikes and start our race.  I headed over there, checked in with an official, and started waiting.  And waiting...

Since there were in effect three races going on (Pro-level Olympic distance Tri, Age Group Olympic distance Tri, and Age Group Sprint Tri) and I was racing the Sprint, I was in the third group to start my race.  So to kill time I walked down to where the swim leg ended to watch the pros and other Olympic distance racers come out the water.  And they looked MISERABLE.  Everyone's face coming out the water was purple from the cold.  There's no way I could have done that.

Finally it was time for the Sprint racers to start, and I headed back to the corral to wait to be called.  We got lined up and an official let us out one by one between swimmers to head to transition and get on our bikes.

The first half of the bike leg was fantastic.  As I crossed over the levee from UNO to Lakeshore drive, I was flying.  My Garmin was telling me I was going 22-23-24 MPH and I didn't feel I was pushing particularly hard at all.  About 4 miles in I started noticing the people coming back and they looked like they were suffering.  That's about the point I figured out that I had a very stiff tailwind pushing me along and it was the reason for my LeMond impersonation.

At the turnaround, I went from LeMond to Pee Wee Herman.  The wind that pushed me along happily at 24 MPH was making 17 MPH a superhuman effort.  I got as low as I could on my bike and spun the biggest gear I could without blowing up my legs, but it simply wasn't enough to maintain a respectable speed.  That coupled with a couple overpasses and levee crossings made the second half of the bike leg miserable.  Not as bad as the guy I saw who had crashed on an overpass and was bleeding from his face when I passed, but miserable nonetheless.  I crossed the timer into T2 with a time of 43 minutes and change for a 17.something MPH bike split.  I'm capable of much better than that on a calm day, but considering the wind, I'll take it.

The run, however, wasn't what I was shooting for.  I had a decent T2 time and started out like I normally do about 30 seconds/mile slower than my target pace and sped up over the first half-mile to where I wanted to be on the run (sub-7:50).  I felt pretty good up to the turnaround and through the aid station but at about 1.75 miles I started getting a side stitch which grew to a major cramp that I couldn't run through.  I slowed to a walk and tried to stretch it out to some degree, but ended up limping in on the run at 25 minutes and change.  That sucked.  There's nothing worse than perfect conditions for a good run time and your body saying "nah, not today.  I don't feel like it".  Had it been a longer race I could have made up the lost time, but not in a 5K.  Oh well.. since I didn't swim the day was basically a fast brick session.  And looking at my times, had I swum OK by my standards, I would have been top 5 in my Age Group.  But I didn't.  Still though, I was second in the "nope, not getting in the cold water category", though that and $4.00 will get you a Café Mocha at Starbucks.

The worst part of the run was when I was trying to stretch out the cramp and someone starts yelling "you're doing great, keep going!!"

No, I'm not.  I know when I'm doing great on a run, and this isn't it.  So shut it.

The highlight of the day was seeing Drew Scott (son of Ironman legend Dave Scott) get his first pro win.  But as soon as I was able to get my car out, I was on my way home.  By 10AM I'd had enough of the cold, windy day.

Louisiana Magnolia Triathlon

6 days and a smaller body of water makes for all the difference in the world.  This was a small local race held on private property with a man-made water ski lake, followed by a flat out and back bike leg and a loop of a subdivision run leg.  Concerns about water temperatures were almost nonexistent as the RD was posting almost daily water temp updates on Facebook and they were consistently above 70 degrees.  The evening before the race I went to the race site to get my packet and see the lake and it was glass smooth.  I was excited to finally put some of my swim training to good use.

Yea, not gonna happen...

The morning of the race after setting up transition, putting on my wetsuit and going to the pre-race meeting,  I started feeling rather, uh, constricted, in my wetsuit.  I hadn't worn it since last year.  Apparently all the time in the pool has had a positive effect on my shoulders in terms of muscularity, but not in terms of wetsuit fit.  And since I'm so limited in experience in swimming in a wetsuit, I wasn't aware of this until as I walked down the bank of the lake and saw my hands were turning purple.  It wasn't as a result of temperature either.

I got in the water to warm up and swam around for about 5 minutes to loosen up before they called us to line up.  I never felt loose though.  But before I knew it I was being called to get in the water to start my race.

I never felt right in the water in the wetsuit.  My hands were going numb, my shoulders after about 150 yards felt like I had just done a bunch of cable rows and military presses, and my arms were dead.  I took a few seconds to sight and give my arms a break and tried to push on, but it simply wasn't happening.  Out of frustration, I went to shore, stripped off the wetsuit, then got back in the water to continue my swim.  But now my arms were dead and didn't want to cooperate, so I stayed somewhat close to the shore to stay out of the way and swam slowly to finish the swim leg.  I was frustrated with how long it was taking to finish and my wetsuit issues and at about the 14 minute point in the water just decided to cruise in comfortably to start the bike leg.  I rolled over on my back and swam backstroke to finish the swim, which I'm sure was amusing for those watching from the bank.

Since I didn't have to remove the wetsuit in T1, I was able to be on my bike pretty quickly.  My bike plan was to stay in the middle of Z4 according to heart rate, maybe push hard to pass if necessary, eat a gel at the turnaround, and stay as low and aero as possible.  This worked out really well as I had a solid bike split despite fairly windy conditions with a nasty crosswind on the longest leg of the ride.  Nobody passed me on the bike and I was able to get around a fair amount of people as well.  My ride went pretty much according to plan and coming up on T2 I didn't feel fatigued or beat up.  A friend of mine was volunteering for the race and asked as I dismounted "what took you so long?"  I waved back to her, but only with one finger, much to the amusement of her teenage daughter and others standing around.

T2 was fast, probably under 90 seconds to rack my bike, put on shoes/socks/number and get running. I still have a hard time pacing myself off the bike at times and as I left the property where the transition was and headed to the subdivision for the run, I was running a sub-7:00 pace, too fast for me to try to carry over a 5K when I'm fresh much less off the bike.  I settled in around a 7:45 pace or so for the first half of the run and thought I was doing well until I heard a guy come up on side of me.  He slowed down to ask how far on the run we were (1.27 miles) said thanks, and took off at what looked like a 5:00/mile pace.  It's one of the few times in racing where I wished I were still in my mid-20's.  After the halfway point of the run, I pushed my pace as much as I could and finished the run in under 22:00.  The course was a bit short, but I was fast enough that I would have set a new 5K PR with an additional .2 miles.

A couple minutes after I finished, the timing crew posted updated times and I saw that I was 22nd overall and in second place in the M40-44 age group.  Ha!  First podium finish for me ever!  I was pretty happy about that, despite the wetsuit issues.

After the race I grabbed a bowl of jambalaya and hung out with some guys from the triathlon club I recently joined (Tri-Dat) until the awards ceremony.  I asked a few volunteers if anyone had picked up my wetsuit, but nobody had seen it, so I figured it was still on the bank.  I wasn't that worried about it since it's obviously not going to work for me going forward.

After the awards, I packed up my stuff, put my bag on and headed to look for the wetsuit, but it was gone.  Nobody has posted anything about it on Facebook, so I'm assuming one of the geese we displaced for the morning took it for nesting material.

And that's why I need a new wetsuit...