Rookie Triathlon - Walter Long Park Austin, Texas

Not to give too much away but I was third behind Roger Myers and another guy who didn't show for awards.  Roger and his Mohawk were a big crowd favorite.

As mentioned before, I am doing the Texas Tri Series and this is the first race of the series.  Three races are sprints, two olympics and a half iron distance.  This particular race is geared more towards people getting an introduction into the sport but there is plenty of good competition for those participating in the series or warming up for other events.

Pre-Race:  I slept pretty good actually.  I woke up around 1am and went back to sleep.  This time I woke up at around 4:45am which was perfect timing.  I took a shower, got dressed and packed up my gear.  My wife decided to go with me but my son stayed behind to sleep in.  It was 52 degrees outside and was going to be a little chilly for standing around waiting for me to finish.  I ate a honey stinger protein bar and filled my water bottle with Accelerade and ice.  All my numbers were attached to my bike, helmet and race belt the night before.  I was ready to roll.  We took off from the hotel a little before 6am if I remember correctly.  I was going on memory driving to Walter Long park.  We had been there in the fall for Ironman Austin and I briefly looked at the directions the day before on the internet.  We made it to the race site in about 20 minutes without issue.  I started unloading and aired up my tires in the bed of the truck.  Any grass area in the park is completely covered with stickers in the grass.  They will grab anything including tires and will poke a hole in your tubes if your not careful.  You could instantly tell who had been there before and who had not based on who was carrying their bike over the grass.  I grabbed my headlamp and went to transition.  The racks were laid out goofy and I had a hard time finding my rack.  The bike out was on the west side of transition and run out was on the east.  It looks like they started with the open group, followed by the veterans and then the rookie group.  The veterans rack for my age group was mixed in with the rookies close to the run out on the east side of transition.  Some of the bikes I racked next to were very impressive and a little intimidating.  Here I am trying to be competitive with my little Cannondale Slice and I was racked next to these $10k rocket ship looking rides with sweet wheels and aero helmets all around.  I was beginning to think I was out of my league but needed to stay in the moment.  Hit the portolets on the way back to the truck.  We sat in the truck where it was warm until it was time to head to the lake.  I put my wet suit on by the truck.  It's warm in the wet suit and that felt good.  Even though the sun came up at 6am it continued to get cooler for the next hour and a half.  When we got down to the water, I stuck my hand in to test the temp.  It seemed ok but it's hard to tell.  I dipped my goggles and hat in the water to make them easier to put on.  The waves started at 8am and I was due to start at 8:16.  Right before they called my wave, I put my ear plugs, goggles and cap on.  Said goodbye to my wife and got ready to go.

Swim:  As soon as I entered the water, I got a very uneasy feeling.  Alot of people were going without a wet suit.  In my estimation, that was a terrible mistake.  They announced the water was in the 70s but I can tell you it was not.  I checked some area lake reported temps and they were in the mid 60s.  When the water started to fill in my wet suit, it was cold and made it hard to breathe.  Just like you feel if you have ever jumped into a cold lake or pool and you can't really breathe.  They put us into the water 2 minutes before the start.  I did everything I could to get my head acclimated to the temperature.  It just wasn't working.  I wasn't really nervous yet and was actually calm.  It was 300 meters.  What could possibly be that bad?  I positioned myself close to the front and when they said go I buried my head and took off.  There were about 5-10 of us that immediately broke from the pack and I was with them.  The water was cold and it was getting tougher to breathe, to the point where I was semi-hyperventilating and it was raising my heart rate.  I was fast for probably the first 75 meters or so.  I looked up and had to catch my breath and tried to swim again.  My body was not happy and did not want to go.  I started breast stroking to keep moving and calm down a little.  Every so often I would try to swim but would never make it more than a handful of strokes.  People were hanging on canoes and buoys.  It never dawned on me at the time how this was affecting everyone else.  My wave was for 50 and over men.  I knew there were several people ahead of me and I saw the race crumbling before my very eyes which led to more internal mental chaos.  Despite what I considered a very slow pace for me, I was catching people in the wave that left ahead of us and didn't have a lot of traffic around me.  I didn't really process this information well.  My heart rate was high, my breathing was not good, I was swallowing water due to the chop.  The wind was blowing waves right at us from across the lake.  I breathe to the right and everytime I lifted my head I was taking on water.  A confluence of very bad things was unfolding before me.  All my mind could think about is a mental image of everyone in my age group leaving me behind and my chance to do well and place was gone.  I swam about half of the last 100 meters and had the strippers pull the wet suit off of me.  It was stuck on my timing chip on the ankle and my garmin watch on my wrist.  This was getting more disaterous by the second.  The move to transition electronically did not occur officially until I crossed the mat after getting my wet suit off.  I looked at my watch and it was at almost 7 minutes.  I was crushed.  Spotting the field almost two minutes in a race that will take an hour was not great.  I was seriously pissed off.

T1:  I was angry when I got to my rack in T1.  The really cool bikes on my row were gone.  That meant all of the fast people were ahead of me.  I didn't do a mental count on who was there and who was not but I knew there was ground that had to be made up.  I went as fast as I could and I did well getting all my gear on.  In fact, I was 25 seconds faster than the guy who won my group.  On the bad side, I forgot to wipe my feet off before I put them in my bike shoes.  I didn't really feel anything in transition but it would haunt me later.

Bike:  I was still feeling angry when I got on the bike.  Transition was no solice for me.  Plenty of bikes were gone and I had work to do.  I was soaking wet, cold as hell, and fighting little demons in my mind.  The darker side said to pack it in and cruise the rest of the race.  The competitive side of me said damn the torpedos and crush it with all you have.  I listen to the competitive part of my brain most of the time.  It's what happened at Grasslands in the hail and rain and it was happening now.  I couldn't give up.  The first half of the race was almost directly into a pretty stiff north wind.  I was really hammering as hard as I could.  I was passing lots of people but nobody in my wave.  There were guys in their 40's, 30s, and even some 20s but I never saw anyone in the 50s.  I could not figure this out.  It was really starting to work on me and then I felt the first rock under my foot.  Then some more and maybe a sticker or two were lodged in there.  I forgot to wipe my feet.  I couldn't stop so I tried to work the objects the best I could in my shoes and carried on.  It hurt.  I mean it hurt alot.  I never looked at my watch while I was riding into the wind.  I didn't want to know.  Once we turned back with the wind, it was awesome.  I never really got out of my max gear and was flying.  Speed eases the pain to some degree.  My legs were crying though.  I was taxing them heavily.  I finally caught a guy that was 57 years old.  Wrong age group but that's ok.  He was pretty fast.  We kind of pulled each other along for a while.  He would pass me and then I would pass him.  It was good incentive to keep the pace up.  Early on, I did get passed by a guy in my age group.  He was pulling away slowly and probably got me by a minute or two in the end.  I think he probably finished second in my group.  At the halfway point, I remember passing one guy in my age group.  I was still stunned by not seeing hardly anyone in my swim wave for the most part.  Maybe some of them were wearing compression socks and I couldn't see their age.  I don't really know but it was freaking me out to some degree because I was passing people in the earlier swim wave groups in chunks.  When I got to the very end of the ride, a guy in my wave passed me.  There was a hill right before the mount line and I didn't know it was there.  Unfortunately, I started pulling my feet out of my shoes and looked up to see a hill.  I couldn't get my feet on top of my shoes which meant I couldn't drive the pedals.  It cost me some time and several people went flying by me at the end.  My legs were burning but I was happy with the effort.  I had a few bouts of why am I working so hard when I don't seem to be catching anyone but that passed.  Since the series is cummulative time for all six races, there was incentive to not give up.  I hoped the work did not trash my legs and translate to a bad run.

T2:  Once at the mount line, my feet were very happy and I was too.  I was out of the bike shoes and on to the run.  I ran with the bike to my rack spot which was closer to the run exit and put my feet into my running shoes after wiping the bottom this time.  I was very quick in transition and took off down the shoot.  My mind set was a little better now.  My anger had subsided and I was back into a healthier mode of delivering a solid performance on the run.

Run:  I really didn't know what to expect from the posted route.  I had been here for Ironman Austin but couldn't really tell where this path was taking us.  Once I left transition, it was almost like they mowed a field and then put you on a wood chip path through some cypress bushy looking areas before catching a little concrete up a hill to the finish line.  When I started the run, I continued to pass guys in other groups but did not see anyone in mine.  At this point, although I didn't know it at the time, I can only assume I was in fourth place based on my finish.  The first two finishers in my group were about 4:30 ahead of me.  I didn't know that but I would never have contact with them and I didn't know what they looked like either.  I know who one of them is now.  The first mile was down a hill and then up the hill to the turn around coming back the same way.  You take a left from there and run along a fence line.  The trail turns from mowed field to the wood chip trail at that point.  I don't know what my speed was but I tried to maintain a 85%-90% type effort for the first mile.  Once I hit the wood chips, I spotted the guy who was actually in third place, he had a 54 on his calf and I needed to get him.  He was breathing hard and seemed to be laboring a bit.  It was the guy who passed me at the mount line on the bike.  When I went by him, I wanted it to be fast and make him feel broken.  I knew he would see my age on my calf and would have to stay with me.  We were headed up a long slow hill when I passed him.  He was breathing hard enough that I knew where he was without looking based on sound.  After about 200 yards the sound of his breathing started to fade and finally after a quarter mile, I did not hear him at all.  I never looked back.  I just kept on going.  Once the finish line was in sight, I poured it on and finished as fast as possible.  My miles were a 7:22 average which is really good considering the surface.  I am very happy with that.  I saw the guy I passed for third place after the finish line.  Really good guy.  He said he saw me passing him and tried to hang in there but just couldn't.  He said I got about 50-100 yards ahead of him and he couldn't close the gap.  I think there were two guys behind me that finished within 20 seconds of me.  The fifth place guy was running 7:10 miles so he was on the way.  In the end, I finished officially in 1:00:01.  Roger led the way at 55:10 so I am 4:51 seconds from first place.  Gotta get to work.

Post Race:  I had mixed emotions.  I thought the swim was horrible and it was.  I think it was horrible for everyone.  The guy that finished fourth had to hang on to a canoe to get his head right during the swim.  The top 2 were faster than me in the water by a couple of minutes which is to be expected since I had problems.  In the water, I know I am on par there with the second place guy and the first place guy looks to be faster than me.  I am close on the bike.  The first two were just over 20mph and I was 19.2.  The dismount line problem caused a few problems for me and cost me some seconds.  I am really close.  The top guy ran 6:57 miles and second place ran 7:19 miles.  I am in the ball park but not sure if I can crank out 6:57.  That's fast.  On the right day, maybe the stars would align.  I saw a few others wandering around the finish line and were looking at numbers.  I think everyone was wondering who the hell I was.  It seemed like they all knew each other and everyone was trying to figure out who the mystery guest was.  I stuck around for awards because I wanted to get a look at who was ahead of me and also to get an award.  This getting an award for placing in a race is all new to me.  When everyone else got introduced, it was to big cheers.  Pretty quiet for me, but I'll take that as a compliment.  When Roger Myers was introduced, he was treated like a cult hero.  He has a mohawk and everyone knows who he is.  It is now my mission to take out Roger, a lofty goal to be sure because that dude is fast.  It was fun and should be fun as the series goes along.  I hope everyone there sticks with it and does all of the races.  After leaving the race site we stopped at the Oasis for Cinco De Mayo before heading home.  Great day for sitting on the cliff overlooking Lake Travis.