2006 UCD Triathlon Race Report
I guess if I ask for race recaps I should probably forward mine on as well; I mainly wrote this with the UCD crew in mind, but there are a few names in here that you'll recognize. Enjoy.
Yesterday was my third year racing the UCD Sprint Triathlon. This entire season has gone poorly for me in terms of triathlon racing, so I was really hoping that I could turn that around on the so-called "fastest course in the west." Unfortunately, things weren't looking good -- I stayed up until 5:00 AM organizing the athlete data and writing the software to do results/scoring for the race, so I only got an hour of sleep. Furthermore, when I woke up from that one hour of sleep, the minor cough that I'd had the last couple of days had turned into serious sickness. I felt so bad when I got up that I decided there was no way I was going to race; I'd just show up and handle the results/scoring as people finished. I'd already packed all of my tri gear the night before, so as I headed out the door in the morning, I decided that I might as well take it along. Who knows...maybe I'd feel a little bit better and somebody would be in desperate need of a relay teammate or something. I still didn't plan to race the entire race, so I didn't bother to eat any kind of breakfast before leaving for the race.
I arrived at Schaal around 6:30 and dropped my gear off at the UCD transition rack. I then cycled over to my office on campus and picked up laptop so that I could use it for results and such. When I got back to the pool, more UCD people were starting to show up and several of them asked me if I was going to race. I actually was feeling a bit better by this time, so I told most of them that I wasn't sure. I started considering that maybe I would start the race nice and easy and then drop out if I just felt too sick. As race start got closer and more people showed up, I finally decided that I'd go ahead and start the race and just see what happened. Thanks to the guys from the tri house for picking out some excellent 80's for our pre-race listening. "Hello" by Lionel Richie may not be the best song to get the adrenaline pumping before a race, but I still enjoyed hearing my favorite song as I changed into my tri gear. Of course most of the selection was more upbeat and I saw several triathletes dancing away to their favorite 80's tunes.
I headed out to the pool deck and claimed my lane, the one closest to the pool exit of course. I don't know why everyone else wasn't fighting for this lane -- obviously the lane closest to the exit is going to require the shortest run to transition and the fastest overall time. I split the lane with Max and noticed that the lane next to mine had been claimed by Steve Sexton. If you're not familiar with that name, he's the guy who won the swim at collegiate nationals for triathlon last year (and he's not "just" a swimmer; he wound up 7th or so overall). I didn't recognize the guy he was splitting his lane with, but that guy was wearing a trisuit that I guess is the USA national team suit (I was later informed that this was James Duff, a professional triathlete and a training partner of 2004 Olympian Victor Plata). Clearly I was about to get my butt kicked by these two. Max kept talking about how we were going to give these two a race on the swim, but I told him he was crazy; I was still coughing a ton and wasn't sure if I was going to even finish the race. Then, a couple minutes before the race started, something happened which changed everything...
This next part is going to sound really strange to all of you except for Max and Iggy, but you'll just have to take my word on it... In my final two years on the UCD men's swim team, there was a certain song that pretty much became our team anthem. I'm not going to try to explain how this song gained that position; you just wouldn't understand. This song was played *non-stop* through those two years. If we were lifting weights in the weight room, this song was playing. If we were driving to a swim meet, this song was blasting on our CD player. If we were puking our guts out as our coach made us "run threshold" on the field while wearing snorkels (don't ask!), this song was playing. If we were top seed for an event at a championship meet and we had to select a song for the entrance parade, this was the song we all picked. We were all so sick of this song by the end of our swimming careers that we never wanted to hear it again, but by this time the song was practically synonymous with everything having to do with competitive swimming in our subconscious. Anyway, when Iggy made his ipod start playing Starship's "We Built This City" over the pool speaker system, it brought back all of those memories from my final years as a swimmer and put me back into the swimmer's mindset. All of my lost swimming abilities suddenly seemed to return while my sickness, lack of sleep, and lack of breakfast were all forgotten. Suddenly I was ready to swim one of the fastest 750's of my life. Looking over at Max, I could tell that the song had had similar effects on him. Of course the song affected other people differently: "Hey, this song was really popular when I was in high school!" was Scott's remark.
Anyway, the final few minutes before the race ticked away and finally it was time to start. All of the athletes assembled on the wall and the final countdown began. When the countdown hit "two" I saw James Duff in the lane next to me take off. What the heck?!?! Apparently this moment was caught perfectly on Scott's camera by superfan Mike. That's his foot sticking out of the water several feet off the wall before my hand has even left the wall! Anyway the race was off. The first few laps feel very smooth and I'm surprised to see that I'm still even with Steve Sexton and I'm still only the body length behind Duff that he got by jumping the gun. I'm sure Sexton will blow me away at the end (after all, he's still the best collegiate triathlon swimmer in the country...), but I realize that I'm feeling really good and I'm not even coughing anymore. I usually keep my pace very mellow during the swim and save my energy for the bike, but I decided that with the longer than usual swim and extended cutoff for non-swimmers, today might actually be the day to kick it up a notch and do some real racing on the swim. So I set my sights on Duff and started slowly inching up on him. I pulled even with him about halfway through the swim at which point he picked up his pace to prevent me from pulling away. I was amazed at how good I was feeling and held my pace. Sexton dropped a bodylength or so behind us, but Duff and I continued to swim stroke-for-stroke for the next few hundred yards. My arms started to get a little heavy around the 650 yard mark, but I still felt great aerobically and I knew that I just had a little over a minute to go before I wouldn't need my arms anymore. I picked up my pace a tiny bit, and in the final 25 yards pulled very slightly ahead of Duff to be the first one out of the water. I didn't think to check my watch as I exited the water, but I was later told that I split about 7:50 (1:02.5 per 100 pace). That would have been a good split back when I was a real swimmer and I never would have believed I could go that fast these days...can one little song really have that much effect on my performance?
I usually have tunnel vision while racing, but at the pool exit I was startled by a large black and white blob that appeared unexpectedly and started cheering for me. As soon as I convinced myself that I was not having hallucinations, I realized that it was actually Adam Schaal in a cow suit. I tried to keep from laughing and raced out to my bike in the transition area. My transition went very well...not counting the time to run from the pool to my bike, I think I probably spent less than 30 seconds throwing on my socks, shoes, helmet, and sunglasses. Of course both Duff and Sexton have mastered the art of the sockless, flying squirrel mount, so their transitions were done in less than 5 seconds and they vanished onto the bike course before I'd even figured out which shoe was supposed to go on the right foot and which on the left. As an aside, the first time I ever saw somebody do that flying squirrel mount was at the Folsom International Triathlon a year and a half ago... Sexton and I came out of the water at the same time on that race and I was amazed by his 5 second transition as I spent 7 minutes disentangling myself from my wetsuit. So the fact that I lose less than 30 seconds instead of 6+ minutes to him these days is a definite improvement!
So now I was on the bike, beginning my worst part of the triathlon. Biking for me is always a matter of holding off as many people as possible for as long as possible, but after my great swim, all thoughts of taking the race easy were gone. People were going to pass me, but I planned to make it as painful as possible for them to do so. I made it slightly past the bridge on Old Davis Road before the first person caught me -- Max. For once, he didn't greet me with his usual "Hah! I got you!" but rather with "Hey, nice swim!" He then went thundering by me like I was standing still. Max is back in shape, so I knew that was probably the last I'd be seeing of him unless he got a flat or something. Another mile or two and topless Tim went blazing by. Close behind Tim came the first girl -- Enchilada! I told her that Tim was just up the road and Max just ahead of him, but apparently she misunderstood what I was saying and thought that there was a girl ahead of her. With a scream of rage she went tearing after Tim and Max as if it were a 1.8 bike course, not an 18 mile one...
After that it was mainly non-UCD people passing me for a while. The strong headwind and lack of UCD presence made it hard to keep my focus on racing, but I forged on. My cough had returned by this point, so I decided that I'd evaluate how I was feeling after the bike to decide whether to go on with the run or not. After a while I saw the second woman in the race pass me...and some guy blatantly drafting off of her. By now, we were way back from the leaders, so it's not like this guy was going to be scoring big points or anything, but it was still annoying. Too bad Kian wasn't there to go crazy on this guy. :-) As I continued on, I wondered how I was doing in the race; usually I can evaluate this fairly easily by how long it takes various people on the team to catch me, but I hadn't paid too much attention pre-race to who exactly was in my wave. Then I remembered that speed-demon Scott had swum a couple lanes down from me on the swim and hadn't caught me yet...so that meant I was definitely kicking butt. Shortly after thinking that, Haydu and then Scott went surging by me. These guys usually catch me in the first couple miles out of the water, so that was a huge boost to my spirits. The fact that I had finished the first half of the course and now had a permanent tailwind for the second half helped a lot too! I got more and more excited as I raced back on the second half of the course. Just before turning back onto Old Davis Road a blur went by on my left. I almost thought it was a quiet motorcycle, but then realized it was just Charles -- no surprise there; you could give that guy a mountain bike and he'd still out-cycle most of the team. About a mile from the end of the bike, Jamima went zipping by, the last person to catch me before transition.
I hit transition in high spirits, so my decision was made -- I was definitely going to go on with the run and complete the race. T2 went quickly; probably less than 15 seconds to swap shoes and trade the bike helmet for my running hat. A lot of people cheered for me here, but I had racing tunnel vision again, so sorry I can't list your names here. I raced out onto the run course just steps behind Jamima and passed her in the tunnel. She shouted some encouragement as I went by and I realized that my pace was probably faster than it should be for a 4 mile run. Of course a general rule of triathlons is that you can never slow down while in sight of a teammate, so I knew I'd need to get away from her before I could ease up my pace. I saw Charles a little way in front of me and made it my goal to catch him. Despite my uncomfortably fast pace, I was just barely inching up on Charles. I think he could hear me coming and was following the same rule about not easing up while in sight, so it took me about a mile and a half to overtake him. My legs were burning by this time, but now the lead athletes were starting to come back the other way, so I cheered for them as they went by, regardless of what school they were from. The top few guys were all from Cal, but eventually Haydu came racing into sight and then a little way after him came Max and then Tim. Closer to the turnaround I saw Scott and Amy both running back toward me.
I arrived at the turnaround and was greeted by the Schaal-Cow and hyper-Taryn. As I set back down the course, Amy was just ahead of me so I set my sights on her. I also saw Sac State triathlete Sean Rudden not far behind me. I've raced Sean at all the races this season and even though he's a much better cyclist and runner (and overall triathlete) than me, he's a good yardstick to measure my performance by. I've never beat him off the bike before, so I knew I was doing well; of course he was closing in fast, so I knew I'd really have to dig deep on the final two miles if I wanted to hold him off. I caught Amy a couple hundred yards down the path and gave her some encouragement as I continued on. Before too long I spotted Scott ahead of me. I was starting to feel stronger on the second half of the run, so I found that I was able to turn up my speed even a little more, even though I was already hurting. This was definitely turning into one of the most intense triathlon runs I've ever done -- incredibly painful, but I knew that I needed every ounce of speed to try to hold off Sean and catch as many of the people ahead of me as possible. I saw several teammates coming the other direction and gave them extra loud cheers, although I cheered for all the other schools too.
As I passed Kemper Hall (my research lab!), I saw another really fast triathlete, Andy Jessop from Cal, not too far ahead of me. At this moment, Sean finally caught me and went by. He was obviously pushing near his limit too, so I raised my speed even more and tried to hold onto him in the hopes that I'd be able to re-pass him with a final sprint. I think Andy heard us behind him and picked up his pace also, so all three of us were running at crazy speeds as we shot through the Tercero dorm area. I was at the limit of my endurance and I felt like my body was going to vaporize, so I started considering just letting Sean get away. Then I saw Valerie coming the other way and my "never die in front of a teammate" rule kicked back into effect. So I made my best attempt to pretend I was just playing with these two insanely fast guys in front of me and let out cheer for her. I managed to pass Andy and now I was close enough to the finish line that it was too late to let up any...it was time for a final surge! I sprinted up the final uphill stretch and blazed for the finish line, but Sean had some afterburners too and managed to hold me off. We did make up serious ground on another racer from Cal and almost caught him; at the finish line the Cal guy, Sean, and I all finished within two seconds of each other. I already mentioned that this was one of the most intense triathlon runs I've ever done and my heartrate monitor backs that up -- my max heart rate was about 10 beats per minute higher than usual and my average heart rate was only a beat or two below my usual max heart rate. Part of that may be from sickness, but a lot of it was the need to push past my limits on my home turf with so many friends and teammates around.
After finishing, I watched my teammates cross the finish line. The looks on people's faces as they crossed the finish line definitely made it look like I wasn't the only one who pushed to my absolute limit; check out Scott's photos of Amy and Britta for some good examples.
Now that the race was over, it didn't take me long to go in search of the food (I never did eat breakfast, so I was pretty hungry by this point). As I approached the pizza table, Kensuke made it very clear that I wouldn't receive any pizza without the red tickets that had been handed out at checkin. I went back to my bag to get my ticket, but the only one I had received was blue... It was clear that Kensuke wasn't going to accept any excuses and even though I may be bigger than him, he looked ready to die to defend the pizza; I picked an easier target and went over and told Cater that I never received my red tickets. "Sure..." she said as she rolled her eyes; clearly she thought that I was just trying to get an extra share, but she gave me my two red tickets anyway. I went back, claimed my pizza from Kensuke, and cheered for teammates from later waves for a bit.
Finally I decided that I'd wasted enough time, so I went into the office and started working on the race results. Fortunately the code that I'd written the night before worked well and made life pretty easy. Of course there were a lot of things that no computer program could take care of -- people unexpectedly switching waves, people crossing the finish line and being recorded multiple times, numbers being miswritten at the finish line, finishers not being marked down at the finish line, etc. I also hadn't known in advance how the different age divisions for the open competition were going to work, so I had to do some rushed, last-minute re-coding to take age groups into account. All in all, handling the results was a lot more stressful than I expected, but in the end I think things worked out pretty well. Of course I soon realized that sending me to the office to work on the results was actually a ploy by the evil race directors to ensure that I wouldn't be present to win any raffle prizes with my blue raffle ticket. I'm pretty sure that I was actually holding the winning ticket for a new P3-Carbon...
Anyway, I guess that wraps up my summary of my third UCD Sprint Triathlon. This was definitely the best one we've had yet and it sounds like most of the athletes thought the same. I shocked myself by having my first "good" race of the season. And taking sickness, lack of sleep, no breakfast, and lack of training into account, I think I'd even classify this one as "great." I guess it shows just how important getting into the right mindset (and having the right pre-race music -- thanks Iggy!) can be to your overall performance. Next weekend I'm swimming at the Pacific Masters Championships...I guess I know what song I need to add to my MP3 collection for that...
Thanks again to everyone who helped put on the race (especially the race directors) and everyone who raced. Special mention goes to:
- Iggy -- your pre-race music somehow got me off to the start I needed, so I guess I owe you a big thanks.
- Adam -- The Cow. And it looks like you've got a good shot at earning a spot in the next Matrix movie: (picture)
- Max -- for not laughing at how easily you caught me on the bike this time
- Amy and Haydu -- consistently our top finishers; and I know both of you have definitely paid the price to get there in hours of training and gallons of sweat... Keep up the good work!
- Jamima -- You made me start my run at a crazy fast pace...but then I was forced to hold that pace the rest of the race and it actually paid off!
- Charles -- For being the elusive target that kept me on pace for the first half of the run, even though my body felt like it was disintegrating.
- Valerie -- For running by and cheering at precisely the moment when I needed encouragement the most; I'm glad you didn't have to write "...and then Matt collapsed in a heap as I ran by..." in your recap!
- Kensuke -- For making sure I earned my post-race pizza.
- Cater -- For giving me my pizza tickets even though you didn't believe that I never received them.
- Danny -- For all the help sorting out the issues that came up with the results
- Chad DeMasi -- for rallying the Herd and getting a bunch of them to come out and attend the race
- Marianne Hernandez -- for tons of volunteer work on registration and timing!
- ...everyone else that I'm too tired to remember...
- All two of you who actually read down this far...