 |
| Got to get rested up before the race |
The
San Juan Continental Cup was going to be my final draft legal race
of the 2013 season. After not being able to race to the potential I believed I
had the weekend before in Cozumel, I was eager to end my draft legal season on
a high note. Going into San Juan, I had the bonus of my Mom taking a
vacation in Miami and deciding to come with me to the race. It’s always great to
have some family around and it made the race more of a vacation for me too.
 |
| View from our hotel room |
I spent
the week between Cozumel and San Juan in Miami. It kept the travel easy and
allowed me to stay in the heat. Landing in San Juan I put my bike together for
the 3rd time in less than a week.
 |
| Large Russian community in Miami meant I could get some home style foods! |
The race course was all in old San
Juan, which meant lots of narrow windy streets and some roads that looked like
hadn’t been touched since they were first put down however many hundreds of
years ago. Cobbles, broken asphalt and tree planters were all going to make
this a very interesting race. Add to that two way traffic to make things extra
tight.
 |
| Just some of the craziness we would be racing through |
The swim
course had its own obstacles too. Floating debris and funky sea water could
prove to be difficult come race day. Later I would find out that we were
swimming in a busy shipping channel and it was a popular place for ships to
dump their garbage, this garbage usually attracted large numbers of sharks into
a narrow bay. The local guy who was telling me this was bewildered that the
race organization couldn’t have found a better place for us to swim. In the 48
years he’s been living in San Juan he would never even dream of touching that
water. All good things to find out after the fact.
 |
| Beat down roads and cones to keep us going the right direction |
Race
morning came a little early for an ITU race. I was down at the race site around
8:00am for a 9:30am start. It was already 83 degrees with 86% humidity. Staying
cool before the start was my main goal, I kept the warm up short and tried to
maximize the amount of time I spent in the water. Dumping a few bottles of icy
cold goodness on myself helped too. Swimming around race morning, it was nice to
see/feel that most of the debris had disappeared over night.
 |
| Some road debris that got picked up during the course preview the day before the race |
Of the original
~50 starters on the list, ~40 had made it to the start line. By now, I have accrued a
few work rankings points, so I finally wasn’t one of the last guys to line up.
The start was off a floating pontoon, which was hard to walk down with everyone
else shaking things about. Goal for this start was to not have the pontoon
shoot out from under me as everyone started, goal was to not belly flop into
the water. A quick reaction time has never been my best quality, but as the gun
went off I managed to at least be moving forward off the pontoon.
 |
| Pretty birds at the hotel |
Things
heated up quickly in the cool waters. With the first turn buoy just 200m out it
was a mad dash to get into a good position for the first turn. Lots of kicks to
the face later, I found some clean water to round the buoy. Glancing up ahead I
felt like I was somewhere towards the front half of the group. But in the water
it’s always hard to tell what’s going on. Arms flailing everywhere, heads
bobbing around and if you keep your head poking out for too long you risk an elbow
to the face. Feeling comfortable in the draft I tried to hold my spot and let
things get settle before making big moves.
Finishing
the first lap, I was finally having some open space around me to swim. I felt
great sitting in the draft but I didn’t have the speed to get around those in
front of me. Between sightings I could tell that a front group was pulling away
and I needed to move up to remake contact with them. Others had probably
noticed this too and combined with a tight exit out of the swim, we began to
battle again. Getting boxed in, I just finished the swim where I was and got
ready for a Paris-Roubaix style bike race.
Hoping
onto my bike I quickly grabbed onto the wheels of a group in front of me. There
were 5 of us and I had strong hopes that we could work together and catch onto
the lead group of ~15. On the first lap the bike course was already taking its
toll on some of the riders, as they dropped back unable to keep such a high pace
over the rough pavement and cobbles. Our small group was able to take advantage
of the tight course and even ride the smooth cement gutters avoiding some of
the cobbled sections. After a few laps, we began to take time back on leaders.
 |
| Tight carpeted roundabout was our last obstacle before going through transition every lap |
Not all
were content working together though. Pack riding in a triathlon is a very interesting
tactical battle. Everyone wants to catch the front group, but everyone is also
very aware of the 10km upcoming run. Mix in a lack of understanding how to form
an echelon and a wide range of cycling ability and you’ve got a very chaotic
bunch on the road. A couple of the strong riders in the group would
continuously attack our bunch instead of pulling through smoothly. I don’t know
why so much of this happens in triathlon, it’s like they think they’re helping
the group when in reality they’re not. These attacks not only messed up our
rotation and slowed us down, but it also meant that someone had to give a burst
of speed to close the gap back up. Things were so aggressive that coming out of
one of the tight S turns, I stood up on the pedals to maintain contact with the
leader only to have one of the guys in our group put his hand on my elbow and
shove me over. This from a fellow USA teammate! Somehow I was able to hold my
balance, there was a lot of yelling and after that I was riding pissed. When we
came through transition and I saw 4 laps to go, I was gutted. We were only
halfway through the bike and I was already feeling really gassed.
 |
| Cranking through another corner |
The
constant rattle and the death grip I had to hold onto my bars was taking its
toll on me. Just when I need it most, I got a big boost of motivation, the out and back course
made it easy to gauge how the other groups were doing compared to us and on
this lap I saw that we had made a huge gain on the lead group. Seeing this,
others from the group began to throw down some vicious attacks. Not wanting to
be left behind after getting so close, I threw down too and chased hard to
maintain contact with our group. This burst of speed got us up to the leaders
with 2 laps to go.
Finally
I was done with putting out massive bursts on speed on the bike and could recover and try to get prepped for a hot and hard 10km run. But it’s
never that easy, I was all out of fluids on the bike. All the sudden I was
incredibly thirsty and desperate to get to the first aid station on the run. The
pace stayed pretty easy on the bike and I found myself coming into T2 towards
the front of the group. My legs felt like hollow logs, just getting my shoes on
was a feat in itself. I fumbled around trying to shove my feet in and get
going. Everyone took the first 400m very fast in typical draft legal fashion,
very quickly I was gapped off the back by a few seconds. The first aid station
was coming up quick and the guys ahead of me cleared it all out. It’d be
another 1000m before I’d get a chance to get some fluids.
 |
| In and out transition |
Or so I
thought, but shortly after we started running, it began raining hard on us. At
first this was kind of nice, the rain was warm, but it was cooler than my body
and I welcomed it. Then, it just suddenly stopped, the sun came back out and
the humidity returned with a vengeance. Reaching the turnaround point on the
first lap I was able to hit two aid stations within 200m of each other. The
only think better than a cup of icy bliss was several of those cups, dumped all
over me.
 |
| Trying to hold it together on the death march |
Coming
back across the wet cobbles I was caught off guard, it was like running across
wet ice. So happy that the rain waited until we were running to start. Part of
the cobble section was up a short climb, and once they were wet the only way up
was to do short stutter steps. As the death march continued, others were
feeling the pain of starting out too fast and slowly I reeled them back in. But
I was running out of pavement and crossed the line with 4 guys within 40seconds
of me. So close to getting into the top ten! Full results can be found here.
 |
| Ryan Bice stoked to have made the podium and get some champagne! |
I ended
up across the line in 11th and there was no ice bath to dive into,
what’s up with that!? Lucky for me the sky came to my rescue and shortly after
crossing the line a major downpour began. San Juan was an awesome way to finish
out my draft legal race season. I managed to gain some more world ranking
points, I’m all the way up to 304th! Now I’ve got something to build
from next year and I know exactly what I’ll need to be working on all winter to
come out blazing next year.
 |
| Cave exploring, counts as a post race cool down right? |
The
biggest perk of having my mom come with was that she could look up fun things
to do after the race. Due to the government shut down, all the national
rainforest parks were closed, but we did manage to find some cave tours that
were unaffected. Climbing through caves with 6,000 year old carvings in them
and then playing in 10ft surf waves was the an incredible way to unwind for a
week of traveling and racing. Now it’s back to Colorado to get prepped for my
final race of the year, the Rev3 Half in Venice, FL. It’s going to be my first
attempt at the half distance and I’m stoked to be able to cap the year off at
such an incredible event. Thanks for reading!
 |
| Surreal landscapes around the Arecibo Indio Caves |
No comments:
Post a Comment