Florida 70.3 Race Report

Florida 70.3 Race report

Well the first race of the year is done and dusted and is always the case, there’s plenty to mull over. Good and bad, questions answered and some still left open, but here’s how it went for me.

I got to Florida on the Thursday; flying in from Boulder (Denver) where we’d had a couple of warm (mid 70’s) days, but mainly pretty mixed and mild. So the first thing that hit me was the humidity. The weather was in the mid 80’s and the humidity was up to 90% making it feel even hotter. I was staying with Dion Harrison for a night in a Holiday Inn Express, before moving on the Friday to another place arranged by his friend, Mikkel Bondesen from Denmark/L.A.

We’d totally landed on our feet, with the place we ended up in looking more like an “MTV crib’s” apartment than the type of place I stay in when travelling to a race (fully fitted kitchens and MASSIVE flat screen TV’s aren’t what I’ve grown accustomed to at races). Mikkel is a great guy and super enthusiastic about doing Florida for the second time and hoping to qualify for Clearwater in the 30-35 age group. So we all passed the last couple of days hanging out and doing a little swimming together. My prep sessions went well and I didn’t feel any adverse effects from the heat on the bike or the run, even when doing my hard efforts. I felt really positive about Sunday and was looking forward to reaping the rewards of the last 3 weeks training at altitude in Boulder.

Sunday rolled around and with great efficiency everything at the race site went to plan. Hats off to the organisers who run this race and to Disney who open up part of their site and close off some major roads for the bike course. So at 6:20am 2,500 athletes and countless more supporters all lined the beach area of the lake for the American national anthem before the Elite men got under way for the non-wetsuit swim.

My swimming has been going well recently and I was looking forward to seeing how it transferred to a race performance despite it being a non-wetsuit swim. Nearly 40 Pro men meant it was going to be pretty frenetic for the first few hundred meters, but also plenty of feet for me to follow. This I managed to do fairly quickly which is a first for me. I felt I was holding the water pretty well and the effort, though a little below what I should be working at, felt good and I was happy to stay behind my man in front. The water was pretty warm, even without the wet suit, but I definitely noticed the benefit of the altitude as my breathing was really under control. The new, somewhat ugly stroke (that has taken many poor pool sharers out in recent masters sessions in Boulder) was working well too. As we turned around the first buoy at the 800m mark, although I new I’d missed the lead group and (possibly) the second pack too, I saw Dion to my right and so knew that I was swimming better than I have in the past (Dion has always been faster than me and is a 24min 1.9k swimmer). I continued to stay on the feet in front all the way until about 150m to go when I drifted slightly to my left and lost him for long enough to not be able to get back on his tail.

We exited the water in just over 28 minutes, not fast, but for me, without a wetsuit a good start, and seeing Dion to my right meant that the swim must have been either very slow generally or a tad long. Either way, it was a good start for me.

I had no idea how far behind the next group I was (as it turns out I came out in the 3rd pack, about 90seconds down on 2nd pack and 3mins down on the leaders) but set off on my new Ceepo Viper for the first 12miles of the bike course on the closed roads of the Disney resort course.

The Ceepo has been noticeably stiff and fast as I’ve got used to it on the Boulder roads and it felt great as I road down the smooth flat roads towards the first turn around. I timed the gap to the lead 3 of Luke Bell, Bryan Rodes and (eventual winner) Dirk Bockel with the next slightly spread out group about 1min50 in front of me. I saw Fraser Cartmell at the front of them all and was pleasantly pleased to only be this far back so soon after the swim. I figured I’d be able to catch them by mile 15 and just set my sights on the 3-4 guys I could see closer up the road.

The bike course in Florida has 3 out-and-back turn-around’s where you get a good chance to measure the gap to those in front of you. By the second, I timed the gap to the now sizeable, but legal (I should stress) group that had now formed. The 3 leaders were just under 3 minutes ahead but I’d only put 20seconds into the chase group. Still I thought that over the rolling roads of the next 20 miles, I’d be able to catch them before we hit the largely flat final 12-15 miles that today would be into a head wind. I was now stuck well and truly on my own having caught and passed about 5 guys. Sadly I just didn’t seam to be able to gain any more time on the large group and the final turn-around showed I was still 90 seconds behind. That was the last I saw of them and I ended riding the entire bike leg on my own. I felt OK and the legs were fine. I took on as much High5 Energy+ drink and gels as I could with some salt tabs in there for the added electrolytes. The heat and humidity didn’t feel too bad, but every time I looked down at my body it was literally dripping all over. I went through nearly 2 litres on the bike, but guess I still probably lost nearly 3kg’s in sweat at the same time – not good numbers for a good run.

I made one slight mistake towards the end of the bike though. With the fairly complex final few miles back in the Disney Land grounds, it had been impossible to drive this section the day before, mainly due to the complete absence of anything that resembled a decent road name or sign post on the roads. I had no real idea of how long I had to go until I needed to get ready to dismount. It’s always good to try to get the legs a little loose at the end of the bike as well as getting your feet / shoes ready to dismount. I ended up riding for about 5 minutes with my feet out of one shoe, expecting to see T2 around every bend. Mental note for next year!!!

Once into T2, I quickly put on the new Newton racers and was out running through the pretty large crowd before I you could say “did someone put another log on the fire???”. Onto the footpath that starts the first part of the 3 loop course and a spectator/coach called out I was 40seconds down on the next guy. Once again there were out and back sections to the run which served really well to show how close you were to everyone else. I got another time check from Heather Furr that the leaders were 6mins ‘up the road’. Those 3 guys were well out of reach, but I could see 4th-10th was well within my grasp spread out from 1-3minutes. I made a conscious effort to hold back as I ran, but still clocked my first 2 miles at 5:40ish pace. Faster than I wanted to be running, but I really felt like I was keeping the brakes on.

I gradually caught and passed some of the guys in front and could see that I was moving away from those who’d entered T2 behind me too. The run course is about 50% road 50% grass. It isn’t too bad though and after all is the same for everyone, so is no excuse for anything. I was enjoying the run in the first loop and by the mid point of the second, about 10k into the run I’d moved up into about 6th place…. And then suddenly all those thoughts of “its not too hot actually, this is OK” evaporated and were replaced by “who’s turned the thermostat up?!” It really hit me that suddenly and my pace began to falter and slow considerably. But, I thought, ‘it’s the same for everyone else, just keep moving forwards’. I finished the 2nd lap much slower than the first (nearly 3minutes slower) but still felt that if I could keep this pace, I’d hang on to a top 8 finish and some prize money. But by the first turn of the last lap, it was clear that that wasn’t going to happen. Guys I’d passed and pulled away from were quickly catching me and I was soon passed by 3-4 of them in quick succession. I just tried to stay focussed on moving forward, you just never know what might happen around you so I concentrated on things I could control like putting one foot in front of the other.

By this time the run course had close to 2000 of the total 2500 athletes on the course and was becoming crowded. It was increasingly difficult to tell who was who so as I ran down the last out and back section and cramp kicked into my right quad muscle, I had no idea how many or who had passed me by. All I knew was that stretching my quad made my hamstring cramp, but then stretching that made my quad go again…. The ministry of funny walks then began as I tried to get moving, whilst stretching the front and back of my leg at the same time. Eventually it seamed to ease and with only about 3 miles left I set off to finish as quickly as I could. The money was now well and truly gone, as was a top 10, but it’s still important to give everything to the line – I’d at least get more from the race physically doing this and hopefully grown stronger mentally if not physically.

The final corner and finish shoot seamed to take an eternity to come. but eventually I completed my last lap, some 6 minutes slower than my first and I found myself sat down in the recovery area dousing myself in cold ice and water. I’d crossed the line in 16th, but disappointingly nearly 16minutes back on the winner; Too big a gap for my liking. My whole body was on fire and tingling, my face and lips were tingling too and a rather concerned looking medical helper took me off to medical. Thankfully there was no need for an IV this time, but it took me about an hour to properly cool down enough to step out from under the wonderful cold towel and stop drinking Gatorade like my life depended on it.

Though the race itself for me didn’t go according to plan, there were still some positives to take from it. Not least sharing in my friend Dions debut as a Pro and seeing Mikkel cross the line looking strong and taking nearly 15 minutes off of his time from last year – an awesome achievement!!!

I’ll be back next year I think, with a little more acclimatization under my belt and another minute off my swim time, ready to mix it up at the front, instead of getting mixed up myself!!!

Doubt

Firstly I guess I should follow up on my last post concerning the swimming which wasn’t going so well at the time. Well thankfully almost the next day I think it was, things clicked back into place in the pool. I started to re-focus back on what I had been doing for the previous few months – both in terms of session structure and actual swim technique. Whilst it wasn’t an instant return to form and speed in the water, it did pretty quickly ‘feel’ better and more like it used to. The Friday swims weren’t fantastic in terms of the times I was hitting, but they were better and mentally it felt good and I knew that the feel for my swimming was returning. Within a couple of days I was back hitting the times I should be and starting to improve on them as I’d hope to. As I write this entry into my blog, my confidence in the water has returned and I’m enjoying getting wet once again. Its so much easier to face 7.5k (300 lengths) in the pool, as I did yesterday, when I can tell its making me stronger and faster, and I’m not feeling like I’m fighting it all the way. Yesterday I did a session with Julie Dibens, Mary-Beth, Rinnie (Marinda Caffrea) and Joe (Gambles) – Most of whom are either current or former World or European Champs of some kind. We swam a set that I’d NEVER have been able to do before and the times I was managing to hit were HUGE PB’s for me. It nearly killed me and the ride in the afternoon was tough due to this, but it was well worth it and another example of why training here in Boulder is so great. To be pushed by this calibre of athlete (i.e. the worlds best) is impossible to over-value. Hopefully I’ll remember this last couple of weeks next time I feel a plateaux in my training and need to be patient again 

But back to this post then…. though in some ways still following on from the pool work.

Here's a little picky from a ride the other day. Gorgeous, but hazy day... those mountains in the distace are HUGE. We rode up over 8000ft on saturday. the air up there is REALLY thin and i was breathing SO hard just trying to get to the top of one of the climbs


When you’re training day in, day out and your livelihood depends upon how well you do, how fast you are, how far you can go – when the clock, times, splits, distances, speeds etc all become your “monthly review”, if you let it, it can leave you in good places or bad places. Mentally I mean, at least.

Because getting faster, fitter, stronger, lighter are all targets and the clock, the power meter, the scales DON’T lie, you can easily be faced day in day out with feedback that tells you exactly where you’re at. Many triathletes and I’m sure other athletes too, can get bogged down in this and let it really get to them. I’m sure people in various other types of jobs feel this pressure too – a teacher with SATS results for example. Recently I’ve had both ends of the stick but have noticed how I (people in general?) respond to the different ends of the spectrum. I touched on the negative a little last time, but on the positive I’ve noticed that actually, instead of receiving good results for what they are and tell me, I can be prone to doubting… even when it’s something as solid and unquestionable as a time. Swimmers will all tell you “the clock doesn’t lie”…. So why if it tells us something good, do we then doubt its ‘honesty’?

For example, I sometimes ride using power as a gauge for my performance in training. It’s measured in Watts and just like the clock, doesn’t lie. One second is the same as the next, and one watt is the same as another one. On Sunday I did a certain ride, with a particular goal in mind for the ride of the number of watts I wanted to produce. I did this, felt good and happily held the wattage I wanted to – both an improvement on last year and also a BIG difference to when I first arrived at altitude. Instead of trusting the results, I found myself questioning its truth. That’s kind of like looking at a clock and questioning if one minute was slightly slower that the one before. On Monday I did a run, again with a certain target speed in mind. I ran it, timed it and thanks to GoogleMaps measured the distance. When I worked out the pace and it was exactly as fast as I wanted it to be…. I still doubted that I had actually done it. Even in the pool, where things have been going great, I still constantly want to prove to myself that I CAN swim a certain time per 100m because as soon as I do actually DO it, I still doubt that it was real and question that I can do it again.

It’s an obsession that I guess drives me on to keep trying to prove to myself how things are going, if I’m improving etc. Not a bad thing on the face of it, but I think it’s important to celebrate and receive them (at least internally) when goals and targets ARE actually reached, instead of belittling them and casting doubt over them. Otherwise this can prevent confidence from growing, which is really important.

Faith plays a massive part in my life and who I am; and faith and doubt don’t sit well together. There’s a great verse in the Bible in Hebrews where it says “What is faith? It is the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen. It is the evidence of things we cannot yet see.” I think this is so important to remember when we do actually achieve something we’ve hoped for (and often worked HARD for and believed will happen). When we allow this to happen, it grows faith and shrinks doubt and this allows us to hope for, work towards and ultimately achieve even greater things.

What I feed will grow, so I’ve been trying to feed the confidence in recent results so that it will grow instead of the doubt.

Patience

Things in the last week have taken a turn for the better in some regards and for the worse in others. First the good…

As I have mentioned in previous posts, the altitude has really taken some getting used to in a number of ways. Recovery, volume, intensity have all had to be adjusted in my training as my body adapts to the reduced O2 up here. But last week, actually the Sunday before last, for the first time I noticed whilst riding back from the track, that I was able to apply some proper(-ish) power to the peddles whilst going over a small climb. Gradually as the week has progressed I’ve been able to work at something like the normal effort I would expect to in harder sessions. Up until now, I’ve simply not even been able to push that hard, my lungs were working overtime well before my arms or legs were able to. A good solid 1 hour run on Tuesday has been built on through the week by some good sessions on the bike (turbo sadly some days due to the STILL mixed weather) and again more good running sessions. This included a velocity at VO2 (almost “all out max” effort) run which I managed on LESS rest that I had been doing so back home – a good sign! Unfortunately I slipped up with some food somewhere along the way and ate something with mustard (which includes barely vinegar a.k.a. evil Gluten) in it and struggled through a couple of days. Being reminded of the same feelings of both mental and physical fatigue of last year wasn’t good. It is just SO draining when this happens and I have to just get as much done as I can. But a couple of easier days and by the weekend I was back feeling good again. I managed a really tough 3 hour turbo session on Saturday followed by some swimming and then on Sunday completed one of my favourite (when its finished at least) sessions, which is a threshold (race pace) brick (run/bike) session.

It was really good to feel back to normal again. It’s taken roughly 3 weeks to get to this place though, but with 3 weeks remaining here, I’m hopeful that there’s plenty of time to increase the impact of training at this level. 3 weeks seams like nothing as I sit here now feeling better, but it was sometimes hard to be patient in this relatively short period. I’m glad I was though as hopefully now the foundations are there, I can build upon it over the next 21 days.

On top of this I went to a long to a new church on Sunday called Vine Life (www.vinelife.com) it was GREAT to find somewhere to go that felt instantly comfortable. But more importantly for me, just good to be back in church and with God.

To the bad then…

Swimming has LONG been something of a nemesis for me in triathlon. But recently in the past few months I’ve at long last made some serious progress with it. This is largely thanks to some slightly un-orthodox technical and training help late last year. However, for various reasons, in the last few days, this seams to have evaporated and I feel like I’m back to square one again. And so right now I have to be patient, and keep telling myself not to doubt too much. “It” is there somewhere… and “it” will come back if I just keep doing the same/right things, consistently. This is the time where patience is hard to have… tomorrow has 3 swims on the plan for me. When things are going well in the water, this kind of day is almost enjoyable, but I know that tomorrow it will be mentally quite hard to make myself do it. But in order for the patience that I need to show, to not be in vain, I MUST do it. Hopefully by my next post I’ll have some good news on the fruits of this round of growth in patience. It’s a journey after all so I’ve got to keep pressing on ‘down the road’.

But to finish on a good note…. I was introduced to “Whole Foods”. A store here in Boulder packed full or organic, healthy foods. It’s got an amazing area where they make things like sushi, sandwiches, burrito’s etc… everything you can think of to eat. And it’s ALL organic and pretty much healthy AND they do things gluten free too!!! So my new favourite sandwich is the ‘Boulderite’ on gluten free bread – basically a REALLY good BLT with added avocado, turkey and cheese!!! Hits the spot PERFECTLY.