Viva Las Vegas

ITU World Championship Long Course Triathlon 2011

Background

The ITU (International Triathlon Union) is the world governing body for the sport of Triathlon. This is the group recognized by the IOC as the sanctioning body for Triathlon in the Olympic Games and World Championship events during non-Olympic years. Along with the Olympics and various world cup events, the ITU sanctions World Championship Age Group events. This past weekend, just outside of Las Vegas in Henderson Nevada, they held the 2011 Long Course Age Group and Elite Championships. The race distances were a 4K (2.4 miles) Swim, 120K (~75 miles) Bike and 30K (18.6 mile) Run.  There were athletes from all over the world competing.  Each country had different standards that allowed athletes to qualify for this race. Athletes in the US had to qualify at one of three races held over the last year.   I was lucky enough to qualify for the event based on my finish at the Pigman race here in the Cedar Rapids area.

In my age group there were athletes from Great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, The Philippines and Japan. Here are some pictures of the different contingents from in front of the host hotel the night before the race.

Team South Africa..

Athletes from Cannuckistan were all over the place..

Some Japanese athletes giving me the universal sign for all systems go.

I targeted two races this year; The Hy-Vee 5150 Championships in September and this race. There aren’t many opportunities to race in a World Championship event based on your home countries’ soil so this was an opportunity not to be missed.

After the Hy-Vee race on Labor Day, I took about a week to recover physically and mentally get my head into what was going to be about an eight week build phase for this race.  My intentions going into it were to prepare as thoroughly as I’d ever done so for a race. No excuses. No short-cuts. Thankfully, I was able to maintain my motivation for the entire phase. I was able to keep my eating under control and not miss any workouts due to injury.  Over the eight weeks, my weekly averages were just over 200 miles on the bike, 48 miles running and 10,000 yards in the pool. That equated to about 20 hours a week training……Dottie deserves sainthood for putting up with me.

Race Day

Coming into the race, I was sure that it was going to test my ability to deal with heat. The average temps for Las Vegas this time of year were about twenty degrees warmer than here in Cedar Rapids. To help me get ready for the heat, I spent bike workouts in the basement bundled up in sweats and a jacket. I hit the steam room four times and did a few runs dressed warmer than necessary. I was feeling good about my prep.

37 degrees…..that was the air temp on race morning.  So much for heat training. The air temp in conjunction with 55 degree water temps meant that the swim portion was cancelled. ITU has a formula they use to ensure the safety of the athletes and the aggregate water and air temps didn’t meet their minimums’. And just as importantly, they couldn’t test the water that morning for bacteria..Lake Las Vegas, the lake we were to swim in, is situated at the bottom of a valley surrounded by houses, streets, lawns and a shopping center. It had rained pretty hard the night before the race and all the run off ended up in the lake…yuch! At the time, I was bummed the swim was cancelled. I think I’m at a point in my swim training where it’s to my advantage to have the swim. I’m not Michael Phelps but I can usually pull off a top 5 swim. That puts me ahead of most of field coming out of the water.

Plan B was in effect. Just a bike and a run. There really wasn't going to be any difference in the strategy I had originally planned for the race. I had a watt number and a nutrition plan in my head that I was going to execute..swim or no swim.

The race orginizers decided that the race would start with a bike time trial (TT) start. Every 5 seconds, they sent off a biker. It went pretty smooth. We had plenty of time to get our biking gear organized and warm clothes on. At about 8:20 AM, I was off.

Here’s a shot of us heading up to the start of the bike. We were staged in race number order.

Bike

Ave mph – 19.4 (7th fastest out of 65 guys in my age group.)

Ave heart rate: 144

Ave power – 200

This course was advertised as a hard, hilly and windy course. It was all that. 7000 feet of climbing and wide open desert. I’d never even done a training ride on a course like this. It was going to be a learning experience for me on two fronts. I’d never raced for 75 miles and I’d never raced on a course this challenging. I was confident though and I was looking forward to it.  

Coming into the race, my biking numbers haven’t been headed in the right direction.  I knew that I probably wasn’t going to have the bike I had hoped for. It’s been a long season and I just haven’t been able to hold the power numbers I was putting up in the first part of the year. I was putting the miles in so I was comfortable that I’d be able to last the distance and run afterwards, it just wouldn’t be as fast as I’d like. Based on my recent workouts, the plan was to keep the watts capped at 250 on the hills and average about 210 watts for the ride.

This is just prior to the start. Notice the extremely fashionable jacket. Dottie found it in the women’s wear section of a local dept. store.  $17 bucks later with the sleeves cut off and bam..I’m warm and ready to go.

As you’d expect, I felt great at the start of the race. The pedals turned effortlessly.  I was able to climb out of Lake Las Vegas with ease and kept my power under control. What a great feeling…I was FREAK’N RACING.. About 20 minutes into the race, I was passed by two guys in my age group. My first instinct was to get out of the saddle and give chase. It took me about two seconds to figure out that probably wouldn’t be a good idea. They were flying and I had a plan that I was trying to stick to. So, I just focused on the task at hand and tried to ride my own race. The course makes its way to the Lake Meade Recreational area and then does a half loop around Lake Meade. It was fun and it was not boring. I was either flying down hill at 40+ mph or crawling up hill at 10mph.

After 60 miles I was right at 206 and averaging about 20 mph. I was happy with those numbers and felt pretty good.  No other guys in my age group had passed me and I had reeled in a few. At that point, the course leaves the roads and moves on to a bike path. I never did any recon on this part of the trail (dumb) and wasn’t prepared for the crappy surface and twisty nature of it.  I wasn’t able to bury my head and focus on my breathing, pedal pressure and the powermeter…I had to pay attention to my “bike handling skills” and other bikers.  The focus level should have gone up to compensate and it didn’t. Over the last 15 miles of the course, I crashed once and averaged about 175 watts. Horse bleep! The end result was I averaged just over 200 for the entire ride. As I look back at the ride, I’m extremely disappointed in myself for not recognizing what was going on and reacting to it. I know that if I rode the course again, I’d be faster..no doubt about it. (Lots of good that does now).

I mentioned I crashed….I ride with a Garmin GPS device that tracks my speed and can plot my path on a map. Here the evidence. I was coming down a hill much faster than I should have and just couldn’t keep on the path.  I ended up running into the side of a hill.  No real damage done but it shows the lack of focus.

Once the course left the path and headed back out on the streets of Henderson, I was able to regain some rhythm and tried to work hard for the last 5 miles or so. My sense at this point was that I didn’thave a good ride and would need to make up places on the run.

This was the first race I’ve ever done that had someone grab my bike in T2.  I got off, handed it to one of the volunteers and made my way into the changing tent.

Run

Time: 2:13:48 

Pace: 7:12

3^rd /65 out of age group

This was the longest I’d ever run off the bike…18.6 miles. Unlike the lack of confidence I had coming into the race about my bike, I’d been running extremely well over the last month. As part of a race simulation I’d done two weeks ago, I averaged 7:06 mpm for 12 miles after riding 65. I felt I was ready to go. 

The course was a four loop course.  The first half of the loop was downhill and then you turned around and ran uphill…. Very little, if any, flat terrain to be able to just get in a groove and just run.

When I saw Dottie at the start of the first loop, she told me there were five guys in front of me. I was surprised it wasn’t more considering how I finished on the bike.  So at that point, I was ok with the position I was in and had a good feeling I was going to move up in the standings.

Coming off the bike, because it was so cold, my feet were frozen. As much as I hate the feeling of running off the bike with tired legs, running on frozen feet is even worse. It took about two miles for my running legs and feet to come in.  Once they did, I felt fine for about a mile.. At mile three, I started to cramp in my lower right hamstring.  Oh boy…this was not going the way I’d hoped.  I proceeded to run the next 15 miles in serious cramp management mode.  As the race went on, the cramps struck other parts of my legs. By the end of the race, both hamstrings and my left calf all were giving me problems. There were four or five times when they forced me to stop and stretch. For the entire rest of the race, I was eating pretzels for salt and trying not to over-stride.. In hindsight, the cramps forced me to keep my stride quick and in check. I also think the change from uphill to downhill running form also helped me not completely lock up.   Even though I was cramping, I was motoring along. It was surprising that I was able to keep up the pace.  I couldn’t open it up, but I was definitely running. 

Besides the cramps, the only other notable event happened at an aid station on the third loop. Coming into each station, I was asking for pretzels and water at each of the stations.  At this particular one, I got my cup of water but the pretzel hand off ended up with me holding an empty paper cup and the pretzels going crunch under my feet.  I drank the water and just kept running. About 50 yards past the station, I feel someone running hard to my left. The kid who had originally tried to pass me the pretzels grabbed another cup and hauled ass to catch me. He passed me the pretzels and off I went. At that point in the race, I was pretty out of it and almost started to cry with gratitude. The only problem was that I didn’t have any water to wash the pretzels down. I ran to the next aid station with a “chaw” of dried pretzels stored in my right cheek. My mouth didn’t have the moisture to swallow them and with my heavy breathing, they were coming out of my mouth like little flakes of snow…It took my mind off the cramps for a while.

The run finished with about a mile and half downhill stretch. On a normal day I would have loved that. On this day it was the most nerve wracking part of the race for me. I couldn’t run hard because of the cramping. With each step…I’m not exaggerating when I say each step,  I was waiting for my legs to completely lock up. They didn’t. I was also not thinking as clearly as I could have. The run course was four laps. As the last lap progressed, I became less and less sure what lap I was on and if I should run down the chute or take off and run another lap.  I was pretty sure I was finished but to say I was 100% sure would be lying. If I had to place a number, I'd say I started the lap at 99% and finished the lap at about 70%. I was out of it. I took a chance, got it right, and my legs were absolutely garbage for the next five days.

As I look back on the run, I’m extremely proud of the way I handled it. I did what I could. I’d never cramped before like this and just took what my body was able to give. Thankfully, it was enough.

Wrap Up

First let me start off with a disclaimer. Yes, this race was considered the 2011 World Championship Long Course Triathlon. But, age group world championship events aren’t run the same and athletes aren’t supported the same as what most folks would consider a typical World Championship event.

Age groupers are on their own when it comes to getting to and racing these types of events. USA Triathlon does not offer any support nor do they try to field the event with the best available athletes. They designate qualifying events and whoever qualifies; can go… if they want to.

All the above is true and the fact is this race was the 2011 Long Course World Championships hosted by the International Triathlon Union (ITU). The same organizing body that puts on the Olympics I qualified. I can’t control who shows up and who doesn’t. Do I think I’m the third fastest M50-54 triathlete in the world today…no way, no how. But I was on the podium Saturday night with the US flag. Mind boggling.

One of the reasons I write these race reports is to give myself a record of my race and document what went right and what went wrong.  I’ve got plenty learn from this experience.

As I look back on this race, I’m happy with the result. My goal coming into the race was to be top five. To be on the podium was unbelievable. I disappointed with the way I raced though. Losing focus on the bike was a rookie mistake.  I was locked into the #’s and didn’t pay enough attention to the changing race environment. I also didn’t recon the entire bike course…how stupid is that??

Another take away from this race is the need for salt. Even though it wasn’t hot out, I’m pretty sure my cramps were the result of a lack of electrolytes. The time spent racing was about an hour and a half longer than I’d ever done before so I was in uncharted territory. I read in most Ironman race reports that folks religiously take salt tablets. I’ve never felt the need to as I’ve never cramped in training. All that changes the next time I race long.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. It was therapeutic for me and hopefully a little educational and entertaining for you.

Last but not least……My wife Dottie is the reason I’m able to follow my passion for training and racing triathlon. She’s proud of me when I exceed my expectations and she’s not afraid to pull the rug out from under me when I’m being a dufus…I am one lucky husband, dad and triathlete..