Sunday November 26th i was in tempe arizona to race the soma 1/2 triathlon. I got to soma saturday afternoon, and took the opportunity to pre-ride the course. It was a 3 loop bike course, followed by a 2 loop run.
Shortly after i got into tempe, i met up with some friends, J and Summer, and we headed out to do a preview one loop of the bike course. it proved to be a very flat course with a number of u turns (5 per loop). seemed like it would be a fast one. The rest of the day entailed picking up the registration packet, dropping off my bike in transition and getting some food.
saturday night was a bit of a restless night, not much sleep. Sunday morning around 4:00 am the final wake up came, grabbed my usual boost for breakfast, mixed my water and 1000 calories of carbo pro. grabbed my bag of pills: thermolytes (salt tablets), vantage (supposed to help with oxygen uptake and stave off muscle fatigue), and recovery amino power (essential amino acid blends). we headed over to the transtion area.
today's race plan was simple, get through the swim in a decent position(i've been severely neglecting swim training), hammer the bike well beyond comfortable and see how hard i can run after that. soma was to serve as a measuring stick for ironman arizona, coming up november 23.
i was in the 3rd wave, starting 1 minute behind the pros, and 11 minutes behind the best of the US competition (a collection of 80 individuals representing various states in the quarterman, a separate race than the 1/2). so mens 30-34 was essentially the first wave of the soma 1/2.
i got in the water swam to the swim start, and waited for the start. the start was uneventful, i swam with a fair amount of effort, but couldn't seem to find any kind of groove. the good thing is i was relaxed the entire swim. the main pack quickly pulled away from me, and i spent most of the swim all by myself, managing to swim off course several times. i had a poor swim at best, i didn't feel overly tired, i just never really put anything together for that swim. i rounded the final turn and swam the last 50 meters pretty coming out of the water in 0:37:30 (0:01:58 min/100 meters).
had a fairly slow transition (i ran down the wrong row and had some trouble finding my bike). i came in, grabbed my bag o pills, T1 was 0:02:00, and i was off on the bike to test out my new strategy.
the morning was a bit chilly for my tastes (i've grown much more sensitive to cold these days), and i spent much of the first loop of the bike shivering. i was putting in a solid effort, comparable to what i would typically ride the entire bike at; however, today was to be different. i was going to build on each loop, the first would be solid, the 2nd would be hard, and the 3rd would be everything i had left. loop 1 went well, i was making up time (very easy to do when you come out of the swim behind 24 people plus the pros).
through the first loop i had gone through almost exactly 1/3 of my calories, right on schedule, and i was feeling pretty good. loop 2, time to notch up the effort a bit. i reached for my pills to start testing how my body reacted at this effort; however, they were gone, as i would see a few miles later, they had fallen out of my pocket and were laying on the course. it's a bit frustrating to go by a bag you know you dropped, that is full of good stuff, and i did it twice. another draw back of looped courses. though i guess if it was really important i would have stopped and picked it up.
loop 2 the pace quickened, and i started picking up more people. my legs were starting to feel a bit of the heavy training, and the hard effort of the day. but that was the plan, see how they react to a truly hard effort on the bike. by this time the bike course was significantly more crowded as more and more waves were entering. there were several tight spots on the course which offered a brief reprieve from the hard efforts. at the 2nd aid station on loop 2, i decided it would be good to see how i handled gel at this intensity, so i grabbed a strawberry banana power gel and consumed it immediately. it made a couple efforts to come back up, but ultimately stayed down.
loop 3, time to ratchet the effort up another notch. i could feel my legs starting to tighten up, so figured it was time to finish the water bottle i had, and trade it in for a gatorade bottle, at least a little electrolytes should help. i finished my water, disposed of the empty bottle, and grabbed a gatorade. i would sip on that over the next 7 or 8 miles until i got to the next aid station, where i grabbed another gel, ate it, and discarded the gatorade. by now i was hammering the bike, i knew i was close to t2, and was really looking to come of the bike in good standing. i managed to have an incredible bike ride: 2:06:55 (avg speed 26.6 mph)
into T2, legs feel good just getting to the rack. i drop my bike off, slip into my new racing shoes, and am off. i spent most of the last 2 loops on the bike looking for the elusive P, indicating the athlete was in the pro field. generally with a good race, i'll pick up a couple of the Pro women on the bike. even with my blistering bike ride, i didn't see any P's. Onto the run course to see if i could rectify the situation, but first a bathroom break.
the run started pretty comfortably, though a bit odd, everybody on the course was doing the quarterman. it took a couple minutes before i saw the first competitor doing the half. he was a big guy, so i wasn't too concerned about him matching my pace when i went by. i grabbed water through the first 2 aid stations, at the 3rd, i grabbed a gel (not to fall victim to the same blunder i made in oceanside). that went down pretty easy, but i had some water to help anyway.
my legs were feeling good, and my pace was building. i was running people down pretty well, and and things were feeling good. i kept grabbing water at every aid station, and gatorade at every 2nd aid station. this worked well for me. i finished the first loop feeling pretty good, and was ready to pick up the pace and see what i had left in my legs.
loop 2 was a bit tougher. within 1/2 mile, i was passed by a runner, he went by pretty quickly, so i wasn't too interested in holding on to his pace, i kept running my race, and balancing my limits. picking people out and running them down.
there were a couple opportunities where the course came back on itself, allowing me to see if there were any new faces trying to run me down. there were none, all the people were those i'd passed, and were falling further off my pace. at the 11 mile mark, it was time to empty the tank and see how things played out.
i really started to go at that point, only 2 miles, anybody can fake 2 miles, but how fast can i fake it?? that was the question, how deep am i willing to go? so i kept increasing my pace, faster and faster grabbed water for one last splash and cool down. at mile 12, i saw the runner that passed me 5 miles back. i thought no way, but wouldn't it be cool if i did.
so i put my head down, and had my final target for the day. with a 1/2 mile left, i was gaining, it was going to have to hurt a lot if i was planning on catching him. i remembered all those track workouts, the 800m repeats, the 1200m repeats, and smiled. i can hurt pretty damn good. lets see how it plays out.
so i continued picking up the pace, went by him, and held strong, faster and faster, with 200 meters left, my legs were on fire, my lungs hurt, and my body was ready to quite. there was a small grassy incline which was almost my undoing. on my way up, my leg wanted to give out, but it held up. then into the finishing chute. i crossed the line, 100% spent. nothing left (that's what i say now, but next time, i'll manage to find a little more and eak out a little faster performance). run split: 1:28:07 (a 6:43 min/mile pace)
as i was enjoying the hurt of a strong bike and solid run performance, i heard the announcer: 'here comes our first female pro'. somewhere out there on the bike and the run, i'd managed to pass both of the pro women, and one of the pro men. i did get 3 P's, i was just too busy keeping my head down and punishing my legs to notice.
all in all it was a great day, and a strong reminder that i need to start swimming more.
photos: http://www.asiorders.com/view_user_event.asp?EVENTID=32532&BIB=665&LNSEARCH=1
results: http://www.ceptiming.com/2008/misc165/08Soma-Half-AllM.txt
