Sarasota ITU Pan Am Cup

 After having a great week training and chasing Strava segment KOMs in Bradenton, Florida it was time to get back to business. TJ and I had a great week riding through the gated gold course communities and finding gators in just about every little pond. Every training session out here was like training in a Safari.

 

This huge Crane was just some of the natural wildlife down here

 We had checked out the race course a the Sunday before the race, or at least we tried to check it out. Nathan Benderson Park is right off I-75 and meant to be the premier location for regatta races. All of this may be true, but it will take at least another year of construction before the park is up to par. We could only drive up to the far side of the park because the roads through the park (the same roads we will be racing on in a few days) were closed and still under construction. The whole place was just a big pile of dirt. Guess I better make sure I've got a spare wheel set in the pits and I'm going to be extra careful to keep my mouth shut during the swim. The water looks very milky and grainy from all the construction residue, but the turtles don't seem to mind!

Big gator just lounging on a drainage pipe in someone's backyard

  After last weeks lack luster performance, I was very eager to prove to myself that I was better than that. I was excited that this race would be a full Olympic distance because I feel like I do better as the distance gets a little longer, especially this early in the season. This race is also a U23 Worlds qualifying race. Meaning that the first American across the line who is U23 gets a ticket to the U23 World Championship in London in early September, not that I think that's something in my reach yet. Overall I was feeling much less nervous about this race, all the kinks got worked out last weekend and now it was simply time to perform!

Panorama view of the race venue

For all the construction going on around the race site, the venue was actually pretty awesome. Doing my prerace shake out the day before, sod was being laid down in some places and fresh cement was still being poured on the road. Although several water trucks sprayed all the road surfaces, there was still a fair amount of debris to watch out for, debris that could bring you down in a corner and/or ruin your day with a flat. 

View from transition the day before the race

The 8 lap bike and 4 lap run course were very simple out and back loops with a 180 degree turn at one side and a loop through transition on the other. The swim was going to be two 750m loops with a diving dock start and an interesting climb back up onto the dock between laps. Never done that before, so it should be awesome! Prerace meeting went without a hitch and was very quick. My parents stopped in Sarasota on their drive to their Miami vacation. It was great to be able to get some dinner with the family before getting to bed for the race. 

Woke up race morning feeling tight, my whole body just felt uncomfortable and it’s not the feeling you want to have the morning of the race. I tried to not think much of it after all; I did still have 4 hours before my race to get loosened up. So I got to work with the foam rollers and did a little morning shake out after my breakfast. It was still pretty early and I had some time to just sit back and chill before riding my bike over to the race site. Our hotel was basically across the street from the race venue so I had a quick ride over to the race course. Nothing makes me feel more awesome than when I have a chance to ride my bike to a race, even if it is just across the street. Something about riding to the race with everything you need for the day on your back just makes me feel bad ass. Maybe it’s just me.

Russian cheering section

This time around I didn’t start warming up super early for the race. I kept things simple and did a 15-20 minute jog with a few building efforts mixed. I got checked in for the race, set up my transition and got ready to don the wetsuit yet again. One last run to the bathroom, during which some of my breakfast decided to come back up in a big puke heave, I’m still not sure what all of that was about. But it’s never good when you watch your race fuel come back out of you. I got into the water and splashed around for a solid 15 minutes or so, again doing a few efforts to prep myself for the intensity of the swim to come. I felt pretty good in the water and thought that I did a good job of getting my wetsuit on correctly and fully.

Soon it was time to line up on the dock. I started more or less in the middle of the lineup this time around. I was licking my goggles on the way down to the dock to keep them from fogging over during the swim. For our race there’s not much warning when things will start, once the call up is over there is a sudden ‘On your marks!” then immediately the horn. As the horn went off I was still squashing my goggles hard onto my face to keep them on as I was diving off. Despite that, I had a great dive, I got far off the dock and had clean water for the start of my swim. The higher seeded racers to my left slowly passed by me as I swam for all I was worth to stay with the pack. I got knocked around a descent amount, elbow to face, getting swam over, pretty basic stuff when everyone is fighting for position. I found a good spot somewhere in the middle back third of the swim pack and was feeling pretty comfortable doing a hard effort swim. As we closed out the first loop I got swam over pretty bad a few times and lost a bit of contact. From there I just could not close the gap back up. I clambered back up onto the dock, took three fast steps and dove off again. The sudden up and down made me feel like I was about to pass out once I hit the water a second time. I spent some time in no man’s land chasing down the pack but to no avail. Eventually I teamed up with another racer who had been on my feet, we finished the swim basically together, at least I would have someone to work on the bike with this time around. I had a decent swim time of 20:25, although decent for me, it’s not nearly fast enough to cut it in ITU racing.

I ran into transition quick, this time there was a very short sprint into T1, so short that I barely even had time to get the top half of my wetsuit off before getting to my bike. I slipped out of the wetsuit and took off with my GBR racing compatriot. The guy was Scottish so it was a bit of a struggle for me to get what he was saying sometimes, but I understood the words ‘go’ and ‘faster.’ We started the out and back loop into a strong headwind. My legs felt awful in the first three laps of so of the bike. I did what I could to help out, because the bike leaders were far enough ahead that we were in danger of being lapped out.

Me leading our little group out of the transition area

We picked off a couple of stranglers and eventually caught up to a group of 4 riders. However, they weren’t very helpful to our cause so we dropped most of them. I ended up riding the last 4-5 laps of the bike course with a Canadian and the Scotsman. With only three of us to take pulls into the headwind, we were losing time on each lap. We worked well together, but there just wasn’t enough of us to share the workload and to give enough rest between pulls. As we came out of transition to start our last lap, the lead bike pack was rolling in, if we didn’t beat them to the run turn around point our day would be over. One of my major goals is always to at least finish the race, and that was very questionable at this point. All three of us realized what was going and we pushed hard. Turning to go back to transition we were in a mad sprint with a tail wind because we could see the runners coming up to the run turn around point. We made it with seconds to spare, blowing through the run turn around just as the runners were slowing up to come around it. Although this meant we were now in last place, we were at least going to have a chance to finish the race. Even with the windy conditions and the smaller group, we managed to hold a 25.2mph average for the 38.5k bike course.

Coming in hot into T2

 T2 was fast and smooth; I was in and out with no problem. I was getting super thirsty towards the end of the bike, the kind of thirst that comes with dehydration and seemingly can’t be satisfied with any amount of water. So I was happy to start dumping bottles of water on my head as we went through the run transition. My legs felt much better starting the run this week compared to last week, no jello legs feeling, but I could tell that I was really tight. My stride just didn’t feel fluid and my muscles just wouldn’t respond to me when I would try and hit the gas. It’s not that my breathing rate or work load felt very high, I simple couldn’t push as hard as I wanted to. It felt like all I could muster was a tempo pace run. Eventually I got lapped by the race leaders, but since I was already on the run, I could at the very least continue my race to the finish. My run split was ok for me, 34:49 nothing to be excited about, but I felt like it was much slower than that, so that at least must mean something good is going to happen at the next race. 

Mom and I after it's all over

Full results can be found here. The week of back to back draft legal races has taught me plenty of lessons. The biggest one being that if I even want to be moderately competitive at this style of racing I need to really step up my swimming, in both refining my technique and just swimming more yards overall. I’m confident that I could hold my own in any bike pack, but the issue is getting into a bike pack in the first place. Right now I’m just a newbie who is barely even finishing these races. But it’s all a journey and with some work I hope that things continue to grow from here, because they definitely can’t get much worse! After the race we got a chance to watch the Cigar City Crit in downtown Tampa. It was great to cheer on Buntz at his first pro race and see him mixing it up. Although he ended up crashing out into the barriers, I think he gained a lot of confidence and will bounce back quickly after realizing how well he can race at the next level. Next I’m off to Tuscon, AZ for a week long Z3 training trip. So follow me on Strava to check out the cool stuff we will be doing! 

Peloton all strung out trying to chase down an attack

 

First Pro Race, Clermont ITU Pan Am Cup

   Traveling for me is usually not an issue, and as a I woke up the morning before my flight to Clermont I felt like I had nothing but time to kill and get ready until my 2:10pm flight departure. The day before I got my bike all set up and ready to race at Kyle's Bikes. I had disassembled my bike and packed all my stuff into the Ruster Sports Hen House bag. So I lazily ate breakfast, showered and collected what I wanted in my carry-on bag on the kitchen table. I could hear my phone blowing up downstairs over and over again. But no worries, why would someone be in a panic to reach me right now?

Bike is loving life!

  I finally went downstairs and looked at my phone. Craig had called and texted me a whole bunch of times to see how close I was to the airport...but why it's only 9:15. Then it dawns on me that when I was looking at my itinerary I was being dyslexic. 2:10pm is my arrival time and 10:35am is my departure time!! I spent a few seconds screaming at an empty house about my own stupidity and then kicked into overdrive. I threw on clothes, chucked the hen house into the car and swept all of the contents of the kitchen table into my back pack. On the drive to the airport I called my mom to explain the situation and to have her come to the airport at some point so she could pick up my car later in the day.

Just enough down time at the airport to get things organized, yes those are corn tortillas

   Some how I made it with 20 minutes to spare before boarding. My adrenaline was through the roof but luckily the airport wasn't busy and I was able to get checked in and through security very quickly. I even had time to organize the contents of my bag. Hopefully this would be the only crazy part of my trip...We arrived into Florida two days before the race and had a pretty laid back time finding our hotel outside of Clermont.

Spring snow storm in Iowa brought me back inside for training before the race

   The day before the race we got a chance to check out the race venue. It was a bit of a drive (50 min) to get to the race site from out hotel. But the site itself was in the awesome Lake Louisa State Park. The course was an out and back loop climbing 150ft in 2.5 km, so basically flat but just uphill enough to notice. The road was in great condition and twisted through the trees as you went to and from transition. Sometimes it would block the wind and other times it would create a wind tunnel that would blow you over. I had a good session of leg openers and practiced my transitions. Being stuck in the snow and cold of Iowa over the winter I hadn't really had much of a chance to practice my transitions or perform a lot of brick workouts. So those were two things I was feeling a little worried about but happy to get a better hold of the day before the race.

Yes, I know my wetsuit is sagging. I was lazy when putting it on

   The swim course was an in water start 50m off the beach, afterwards we had to run another 50m through sand and then another 200m on a boardwalk to get to the transition. But the interesting thing was the depth of the water at the start meant we could still run/leap the first 50m or so of the swim start. The water depth would change too, meaning you'd have to stop running because it got too deep and then after you dive in you'd have to start running again because it'd be too shallow to swim. So it was going to be an interesting dash into the water and a critical tough run up to T1. Water temp was 60 degrees F so it was going to be a wetsuit swim, Ugh. Being a sprint distance race, this was going to a fast all out effort!

Finish line banner, day before the race

  Race morning started for me at 7:00am, it's nice having the race start at 11:30am. I got to the race course around 8:30 and didn't really know what to do with myself. I may have started to warm up too early but I was at a loss for what to do with all this extra time. Rookie mistakes. I borrowed a random trainer to spin on the bike for a bit, and I got checked in and my transition set up with out any issues. Down to the race start I went, the water was a bit choppy with one foot swells greeting us.

  Not having any ITU points to my name yet, I had a later start position. So I put myself to the far left of the start line and got ready to rock. I knew the swim was going to be an aggressive fight but when the horn went off I found myself on the back foot right away. Leaping through the water to fight for position with the pushing and shoving is not quite what I was ready for. Already I was bleeding critical positions. Once we got swimming I tried to insert myself into the pack but kept find myself on the left edge sucking in a lot waves and getting pushed back by the water. As we hit the swim turnaround I was still in the middle of the race and happy to finally turn around and be out of the waves. I was still having trouble finding someone's feet to hang onto. Now with the waves coming in slightly behind us I began to realize too late that I was on the wrong side again. People were swimming passed me and I was being dropped back. Getting up to run to the beach was one of the most disheartening sights for me. I was at the back of a long line of racers and this race was already getting away from me. This is not where I wanted to be, my race was over after 10min.

Standing on the start line (this was taken from the edge of the beach) I'm on the far left somewhere

   I got to transition to see that there were only a few other bikes left in transition besides mine. This was not good, all I could think about was how I was going to be lapped out of my first race. The closest bike pack was within striking distance. They had a gap of 20-30 seconds on me. In the first 3-4min of my bike leg I averaged 27mph just to catch them. This includes running with my bike to the mount line, getting my feet into my shoes, climbing the slight 150ft incline to the turn around and whipping around a tight 180 degree turn. This hammering effort left me beat, but I knew that I had to make something of my race and I was really happy to have bridged that gap. After a bit of recovery I got to work with a few others in the pack. There were about 8-10 of us originally in the pack with about half of us putting in some work to catch the next pack.

I tried to change my attitude during the race and just be awesome

  Although the course wasn't very technical there was a series of tight corners to maneuver through on every lap when we passed transition. I would put myself on the front of this section and build a 5-10sec gap on the rest of the field just by taking the corners faster, but this didn't gain me much because I wasn't willing to put in another very hard effort to bridge the 60sec gap to the lead pack. Eventually the race played out with two bike packs. The leaders pack of 25 or so and then our pack 90 seconds down with another 25ish racers. Our pack ended up having too much dead weight to be an efficient time trial machine and on the last lap many where simply looking at each other and coasting to get ready for the run. I moved myself to the front to get ready for what was going to be a hectic transition.

  I was in and out in about 22 seconds. My legs felt like jello and my stomach was very unhappy with me. This was probably due to the hard effort on the bike, a lack of brick training leading up to this race and not really knowing how to fuel myself for a race that started so late into the day. I was bleeding spots in the first mile of the run. After that I began to feel stronger and stronger. My legs picked up and I began to remember what it's like to hurt in a race again. I began to pass other competitors and started to enjoy myself. I wish I would've had splits between my two run laps because I am convinced that I did the second lap at least a full minute faster than the first lap.

  Overall I placed 28th out of 47 starters. I was hoping for a top 20 spot to earn a few ITU points but I really shot myself in the foot with how I performed in the swim. Both my swim time was slow and my run time was nothing to brag about either. I expect more out of myself, but luckily it's very early in the year and it's good to get the kinks out now. Although my result was poor, I was very happy with how I handled the race as it unfolded. Mentally it shoots you down to be so far behind at the start and that can be the most dangerous thing that happens. But I was able to muster some strength and make something out of my race. Check out full results here. This Saturday is the Sarasota Pan Am Cup, a full olympic distance race. Hopefully things go better for me there.

Outdoor pool at the YMCA, yes please!

   For the next week I will be staying at a great home stay and training in beautiful Bradenton, FL. I will be spending plenty of time in the pool and doing a few more bricks. Focusing on training and relaxing should give me a great boost leading into Sarasota. Race season is in full swing and I can't wait for more!

It's great to be able to find breakfast on a morning run