2008 Bolder Boulder

Memorial day dawned grey and dreary; it promised to be a good day for racing in the streets. The rain that woke me at 3 am had stopped leaving the streets wet and the sun hidden behind clouds.

I made good time getting ready and left with plenty of time to make the trip to Boulder. During the walk to the start line I saw the T-T group and saw Bob wearing his AG champ jersey from 2007. He went on to win his AG again this year.

I had plenty of time to get a good position in AA and lined up only a few people off the front. The wheelchairs started, A started and then I was off and running. You have to watch the pace the first kilometer since it's a slight downhill which combined with the enthusiasm of the start puts too many people out too fast. I held back a little letting the crowd settle down. The triathlete I met at the start left me behind even though he was trying for a time a minute slower than mine. I caught him around 4k and never saw him again.

I caught my friend Scott around 4k just like last year. Strange how I caught him both years around the same place. The rest of the race went pretty much according to plan, nice even splits, keeping focused on good form and good pacing. I finished in 39:09 which was good enough for 6th out of 388 in my AG and 429th of 48387 finishers overall.

After finishing the race, it started to drizzle a little which meant the trip to the post-race expo was quite short this year. No sense standing in the rain cooling down and catching a cold.

Perspectives

My first triathlon of the season was supposed to be this Saturday and I was wondering how everything would go. I raced Pelican Fest last year so I have an idea of the course and I think my training has been going as well as last year. We had a few warm days so the lake shouldn’t be too cold and it’s only a sprint.

Should I take a couple easy training days or just maintain my training. I still had to change the tires on the Cervelo from the trainer tires to the race tires. When would I get the time? And then there’s the graduation parties the night before the race and the race is an hour from my house so it’s going to be an early morning. I haven’t checked my race gear for a year so I should pull everything out and make sure I have body glide and everything else I need.

That was the thoughts Wednesday night and Thursday morning. Around noon a massive tornado hit the town hosting the race. The tornado was traveling around 50 mile per hour and was reported to be a mile wide. The hail was reported as baseball size. The damage to cars, homes and businesses was devastating. Hundreds of people are homeless without power and utilities.

It puts my case of nerves in perspective.

USAT All American

A few weeks ago, I found out that I was ranked 158th in my age group and I was pretty excited. Well imagine my surprise when I received a mailing from USAT stating that I earned All American status for 2007. I've never been All American at anything. Needless to say, I was very excited. I guess all that basement time paid off.

2008 Cherry Creek Sneak

Yesterday was the psuedo-official start of the race season with the Cherry Creek Sneak. I've run the Sneak several times and I've always had a fun time and this weekend was no exception. The main event at the Sneak is a 5 mile run through the Cherry Creek shopping district. The course has changed a little since I last ran it with the hill on York St being removed.

The sub-30 runners were given a five minute head start and then the rest of us were off. I lined up a few rows back from the start and was off and up to pace pretty quickly. My goal for the race was to hold 6:20, maybe a little below. That's my goal pace for the Loveland and Boulder triathlons and I wanted to see how my training is going.

I went through the first two miles around 12:06 and decided to pull back just a bit but not too much. Mile 2 saw the only climb and it wasn't really much. There was a slight breeze from the south so I pulled up behind a bigger runner for a little wind protection. Miles 3 and 4 are nice straight stretches down and back on Speer. Just when you're getting close to the finish line, you take a left and head into the shopping district, so close yet almost a mile to go. I tried to pass a couple people as we wove around the streets of North Cherry Creek but I wasn't able to get away. The last mile was a series of pass and be passed. There wasn't really a chance to sprint for the line. When you came around the last corner, you were twenty yards from the finish line.

Overall, it was a great race and things are looking good for the 2008 season. I finished fifth out of 205 in my age group and 32nd out of 3800 overall. My splits were pretty consistant according to the Garmin. I had it set to take 500 meter splits and they were around 1:50 - 1:55 with one at 2:15 and one at 1:40.

158

USAT posted the rankings for last year and I was ranked 158 in my age group. I know that doesn't sound too great but it's good enough to put me in the top 5% of my age group nationwide. There are about 3360 registered USAT members who raced at least three sanctioned races in the country. All in all, I think 2007 was a very good year.

Swim Test

After doing the same swimming workouts for weeks, I finally broke down and purchased Workouts in a Binder. Even though I've been on swim teams for years, I never really paid attention to the workouts, I just did them.

The first step in Workouts is to determine your pace. There are two fitness test: 3 x 300 and 3 x 100. Since I had plenty of time at the pool, I decided to do both test with a 200 recovery between sets.

My times for the 300s were 4:20, 4:15 and 4:10 which averages out as 4:15 for an average 100 pace of 1:25. On the 100s, I did 1:15, 1:14, 1:15 for an average of 1:15. I was really please with both paces, especially the 100s since I haven't been that quick in a while. I'll now have to see if the Workouts make me faster or just add variety, hopefully both.

Simplicity

With training in three sports, most triathletes don't have time for core or strength training. While it's not a great program, I've come up with a simple program that doesn't take too long and gives me some basic strength training.

Every morning I do three sets of ten crunches, situps, pushups, dips and curls. For the crunches and situps, I use a camping pad and for dips I use a chair. To do the curls, I purchased some elastic resistance tubing. Nothing fancy but it does help me build some strength and it doesn't take a lot of time.