NOLA 70.3 RR

Sorry for the delayed posting, but I am back in Lexington and back in full swing with training and work. This past weekend I traveled down to New Orleans with a big crew from Lexington to compete in the 70.3 race there. We left Lexington on Thursday morning in a 15 passenger van which had 4 passengers and 6 bikes along with lots of race bags and suit cases. We made it work and had a pretty good trip down. Once we got there I went for a little shake out jog through downtown New Orleans and then we went on a journey to find some good creole. We were successful but it was expensive.


Friday and Saturday were much of the same as we were getting in a few short workouts, fighting the wind in the process, and then looking for places to eat that wouldn't break the bank. I did get a great breakfast Saturday morning at the host hotel. I had a crawfish omelette, oatmeal, fruit, yogurt, coffee, and some french toast which was amazing. I did get in the lake that we would be swimming in Saturday afternoon and it was very choppy. It was some of the worst water conditions that I've swam in so it made me wonder about the race the next day.


Sunday morning rolled around and it was still kind of windy. We made it down to transition and started to get everything set up when Tom Z. came by to let me know they decided to cancel the swim. Then a few minutes later, they announced it over the loudspeaker that the swim was cancelled. I understood the decision, but was a little frustrated considering my current swim fitness. They decided to start the Pro's in a TT format with :30 between each person. This was the best decision as they considered to make us run a 1/2 mile run before the bike which would have done nothing to break up the Pros.


Anyways, I was number 33 so I was probably 7th or 8th from last of the men's pro field to start with all of the "top" guys seeded 1 - 10. So I would be starting at least 5 - 10 minutes behind some of the faster guys that I could pace off of. The start was built up and then much of a let down as only 1 guy started at a time and it really wasn't that exciting, haha. About 15 minutes after the first guy took off, I started. The first 3 miles were with the whipping wind, I averaged over 29 mph for this section AND THEN I turned into the wind. Mile 3 - 16 were directly into the wind. I caught 1 guy up the road but had 2 - 3 guys catch me during this section. We got a break for about 2 - 3 miles after a right hand turn but then turned back into a head wind before the 20 mile mark and stayed in this direction until the 28th mile. That U turn was my favorite of the whole race, haha. We turned around and immediately my current speed went from 21ish to 29ish mph. I stayed about where I was for the remainder of the bike as I did catch a few guys but also had 1 or 2 more guys catch me. I came into transition feeling like I was close to last place as I had roughly 4 - 5 guys pass me and I was one of the last pro's to start.


I ran through T2 (BTW, I wore socks since we didn't have to swim) and got to my rack position. I slipped my first shoe on and felt something in my shoe. I looked at my other sock and realized I had roughly 80 burs (those little tiny spikey things that stick to your clothes) on the bottom of my foot and it would have taken forever to remove them so I just put my shoes on and took off on the run.


All I could think about for that first mile or so was all of those little burs on my feet, but I started to fatigue a little after that so I stopped focusing on my feet. I passed 3 - 4 guys in the first 2 - 3 miles of the run and was trying to catch a few others. Even if I was running faster than some of the guys in front of me, I wouldn't know it because they started so far in front of me. I was holding a decent pace and I kept pushing. I knew there were valuable WC 70.3 points on the line and I need to get all that I can. I managed not to fall off too bad towards the end of the race and I caught one last guy before I made it to the finish line. I had no idea what my finishing place was or what my time was but I didn't care at the moment.


I immediately pulled my shoes off and got rid of my socks as they were still covered with all of the burs. I was smart about my "swim bag" as I put my jacket in it and also my phone, so I was able to get my bag from the bag check and look up the results on ironman live. I found out that I had finished 15th, which I was hoping for a better finish, but I knew that there were some really fast guys that I was racing, and also some guys that were really strong cyclists/runners that can't swim. I am confident that my placing would have been better if the swim would not have been cancelled.

After the race I waited around for my fellow racers from Lexington while I talked amongst the Pros about their races. I grabbed a little food and we took the shuttle back to the transition area to get our bikes.

That evening I was able to walk down Bourbon St. and find some good Creole food. I tried some boiled Crawfish, raw Oysters, and then a few PoBoys to catch up on my caloric deficit from earlier in the day. And of course I had to try the beignets from Cafe du Monde. They were very good but I think I prefer regular donuts from Krispie Kreme or Dunkin' Donuts.

Next up: St. Anthony's Tri on May 1st.

Tony

Swimming - Part 2

So, after Augusta, I decided I was going to swim more and do harder workouts. Swimming is the easiest of the 3 sports for me to talk myself out of a hard workout. I may go to the pool thinking about maybe doing 6 x 400 HBA, or 20 x 100 on a hard interval and once I get in the water, it just sounds better to do the Master's workout of the day as it was easier, or to throw on some paddles because I LOVE to swim with paddles. I had 1.5 months before Clearwater 70.3 and I needed to be with the main pack out of the water if I wanted a chance to finish well. I committed myself for the following month to at least be in the water 4 days a week swimming. I was doing some really challenging bike / run workouts so adding in yardage in the pool was a challenge. I did successfully add in harder workouts in the water, but my yardage stayed about the same as it had been before. I was only hitting around 20,000 yards because I was only swimming 4ish days a week, but was feeling better in the water because of the threshold workouts. I went into Clearwater and had a decent swim but nothing spectacular. I came out of the water with some strong cyclists, but had an average T1 and was left in the dust. At least at Augusta I was able to pace off of Chris Legh when he passed me early in the bike to help catch some of the other guys. At Clearwater, Legh and a few others beat me out of T1 so I had no one to pace off of and the few guys that I was catching were slightly weaker cyclists than me, so we were not making up ground on the main pack. I ended up in no man's land and had a pretty average race. After Clearwater, I took it easy for a few weeks, then hit it hard in December. I got my yardage up to over 20,000 yards a week and continued to build from there. I swam over 100,000 yards for January and February, and then March was really close to 100,000 and that included 2 taper weeks for 2 separate races. I have felt a large improvement in my swimming as of late, and I was only 1:05 behind Kahn and O'Donnell at San Juan 70.3. I feel like the only reason I wasn't in the pack was because of the guy in front of me stopping about 1200 into the swim thus opening a small gap from us to the end of the front pack. This is the closest I've been to the leaders in a big race like that and has given me some confidence about my swimming. There are a few small changes I've made in my swimming that have enabled me to do this. 1. Swimming main sets of at least 2400 yards, preferably longer. For distance swimmers I've read it needs to be 3k or more. 2. Lots of drills, and emphasis on 1 arm swimming with the opposite arm at your side. 3. Swimming w/ a pull buoy between your ankles. 4. Cutting back on the # of yards I swim w/ paddles. These three things have helped A TON. I rely a lot on my kick, even when I pull w/ paddles and a buoy, I still unconsciously kick. When I put the buoy between my ankles, it doesn't allow me to kick at all and makes me focus on rotating my body. It also makes me think about keeping balance without using my kick to stabalize myself. I feel like this has given me a better feel for the water. Also, since I'm actually swimming more and not pulling w/ paddles, this also has allowed me to "feel" the water better. The 1 arm drill is incredibly hard when you don't have good body balance in the water. This has been a great drill for me and allowed me to focus on my body rotation and position in the water. The #1 step was swimming longer main sets. On most days, I would swim 4 - 5k but do this by swimming 1.5k warmup, and then 2 sets of around 1,500, whether they were swim, kick, pull, drill, etc. So my usual swim set was only about a mile in length and then 2,500 on super long days. Once the new year came around, I have tried to do a longer main set even on the easier days, but just swimming slower than usual. If on a harder day I'm holding 1:05 pace per 100, the easier days I'm going over 1:10 pace. And I try to include a lot of backstroke on the recovery swim days just to mix it up and not get burnt out on freestyle. Harder days I'll either have fast intervals and have a goal of just finishing the main set, or focus more on pace and take :10 - :20 rest between intervals while trying to hold the pace. And on the harder days, I'll incorporate a long cool down just to help loosen up and get in a few extra yards. I am still working on my swimming as it is something that I will always be working on, but I swam 21,000 yards last week and that was with a recovery day and a skipped swim workout so I'm pretty pleased with where I have progressed to from just November of last year. Tony