Gobble Gallop

For the 4th year in a row, the family did a 5k race on Thanksgiving morning. We had a snow storm in the days leading up to it, in fact my daughter had school cancelled on Wednesday so she got a little extra long Thanksgiving break.

Because of the snow, the roads were not very good for running and I had no interest in injuring myself so I took it easy and just made it a 3 mile base run, which is essentially all I have been doing lately anyway.

So in the end, my time was 32:12 which was a couple minutes slower than last year, but I am quite ok with it.

Photos

One of the nice things about the race in Miami is that they had a bunch of photographers there. That's good for me because I was by myself, so no sherpa available to take my photo. I ended up paying to download all my pictures as there were several good ones. Here is a quick selection of my favorites.

Team USA

So when I found the MiamiMan Aquabike race a few months back I didn't know that it was a USAT national championship race. When I did discover that it was a national championship event I thought that was kinda cool. There will probably be some good racers there. I was looking up some of the guys in my age group that were registered and I noticed that a few of them had bio's on the USAT/UTI sites for having been a part of Team USA and the age group world championships.

Well that got me wondering how does someone qualify for Team USA and those world championships. It took me a bit of googling but I eventually found out that I needed to finish top 18 in my age group at this MiamiMan race.

So that's kinda cool...I wonder where it is next year. Almere/Amsterdam Netherlands was the answer. So thats cool. I like Amsterdam and now I tell my wife and she is excited about the possibility too.

However, in the days leading up to the race I find out that the world long-course aquabike championships in 2020 will be raced at the FULL distance of 2.4 mile swim and 112 mile bike. Thats double what I am about to compete in and changes things. That is WAY more training than I had planned for next season.

I do well in the race, finishing 14th and a couple of days later I get the email that I have earned a spot on Team USA! This is really exciting. My wife is excited. Family and friends are excited for me. I paid my deposit and now I am officially a member of Team USA for next year!

My coach and I still need to have a heart to heart about what my training plan is going to look like next summer.

MiamiMan Race Report

My first ever Half-Iron Aquabike race. Not even sure how to do a race like this, but I am ready and it is time. The day before I did a practice swim in the 83 degree water. That is literally twice the water temperature from Lake Superior during my last race. No wetsuit for anyone, and I am glad I invested in a swimskin.

Swim

It was a wave start with my age group of both aquabike and triathletes in it. I took it easy at the start and once at the first buoy turn we began to spread out a bit.  As we made the first RH turn, the next buoy was straight into the sun. No way you were ever going see it. So it was just follow the other swimmers and hope they are going in the right direction. Same really with the next leg back to the beach. By this time, it was starting to get crowded. Running into slower swimmers from earlier waves etc. I hit the beach, turned around and headed back out. 

The second loop was terribly crowded. There was more than one time that I had to just stop because there was a wall of slow swimmers in front of me. I swam around a lot of swimmers just to try and keep moving which slowed me down quite a bit.  I swallowed a couple of big gulps of water on this leg too, but I got through that. Overall my breathing was fine through the entire swim and no asthma issues at all!

Bike

Once on the bike, things quickly calmed down, with my HR was right where I wanted it. The first 8 miles went well, and I was feeling good. My power was about 5w lower than I had planned, but I was feeling good and cruising at a good pace so I just kept trying to maintain it.

What was weird about this race was the large amount of people I passed. None of the races I have done have been this big and I had to pass a TON of people. I estimate I passed 100 people. Some were easy to pass as they were going pretty slow, others were a bit of a challenge. Or I would end up having to pass 4-5 people in a row and put out some serious power to do so.

At mile 30 or so the wind went from light to strong and gusty. It got brutal out there and much of the return back to the park was dead into that wind. 

At one point I am going 15mph into this headwind and still passing people. It was tough. By mile 40 I am starting to suffer a bit. My legs are getting tired, my butt is getting sore, my HR is way high. The wind was obviously having an effect on me so I tried to keep it under control the best I could for the last 10 miles and maintain the same power.

Then with just a couple of miles to go, we are back on the north road that leads into the park, and I get stuck behind a car. He was hugging the left side of the road so I would have to cross the double yellow lines to get past him and I didn't trust him enough to pass on the right. He just refused to speed up and go around the bike in front of him either. It was ridiculous. I easily lost 2 minutes on that part of the course due to that one car. 

Finally back into the park and hard until the dismount line. Then run my bike to the entrance to transition and I am DONE! I stopped for a bit to catch my breath before slowly walking my bike back to my rack. I changed my shoes and then ran through the finish line to get my medal. 

Bike       2:37:17  12/19 age group, 61/169 Men, 74/312 overall      

Overall 3:22:37 14/19 age group, 68/169 Men, 86/312 Overall 

So immediately following the race I was a bit disappointed with my result. Though I crushed my bike split I felt like I didn't do well. I was 2 minutes off of what I thought in my race plan was stretch goal total time and that had me down. As I settled down and reflected more on this I realized that these thoughts were STUPID! 

This is only the 3 time I have ever actually ridden 56 miles on a bike. I have only raced this distance twice and the first time I had significant asthma issues so it really doesn't count, so I am still figuring out how to ride/race this distance. Plus this is only the second year of doing triathlons. I just finished the race and had the 12th fastest bike spilt of my uber-competitive age group, and nearly top third bike split of all men!  

So HOLY CRAP, what am I so down about?!! 

I have turned those thoughts around 100%. I am unbelievably happy with what I have accomplished this year. I am really glad I did this race and ended my year on a high note. It was a great venue, a great race, and much different than I have experienced. I learned a bunch, realized I have much more to learn and experience, and I look forward to winter training and next season. 

Race Week

Well I have finally made it to race week. The last couple of weeks of training have gone well. 3 weeks ago I had a significantly reduced training week and it was just weird to have that much time off. Then we hit it hard for 2 weeks and now I am tapering prior to the race.

I shipped my tri bike to the race a couple of weeks ago so I have had my road bike on the trainer. It is SOOO different. My butt is not used to that seat and that position after spending the last year on my tri bike. I also don't have electronic shifting on my road bike so that throws me off too. But its still fun.

I am travelling this week for work spending Thursday and Friday in Knoxville Tennessee, then heading to Miami on Friday night. So I will be away from home, and not have a lot of control of my diet and exercise in the days prior. But its all good. I will get through it just fine.

I fought through a cold over the last week as well. Thankfully it didn't become respiratory and just stayed as a sinus infection. I also made a couple of trips to the chiropractor for some low back pain and that is finally cleared up as well.

My friend Amy texted me today and asked if I was ready for the race. Well I don't know that we ever feel "ready" for a race. I think we always feel like we could have, should have, done more training. But I told her that I am as ready as I can be right now.

Race day weather appears to be in the mid 70's which is much warmer than I am used to right now. It doesn't really affect me as much on the swim or bike like it would on a run. So a good thing I am just doing the swim/bike portion. There are 3 aid stations on the bike too, so plenty of opportunities to hydrate.

I am excited and nervous for this race. I am well prepared, I have a good race plan, and I plan to enjoy my time in the sun. I wont get a chance to open water swim for another 8 months, and outside bike riding will be at least 6 month from now.