Starting to come together: Loveland Lake-to-Lake report

On the drive to Loveland, Colo., for the Lake-to-Lake Triathlon, I felt kind of like Georgia State's basketball team taking the floor against, say, Duke. While I don't get caught up in age-group placings and such, I have gotten spoiled, what with taking home a little hardware in my first two races of the season, including last week's race, a day when I didn't feel particularly good. At the same time, I show up for every race hoping to beat a few people and truly compete, something I've done the past two weeks.

So the Lake-to-Lake, contrary to what I reported last week, is not the Colorado qualifier for the Best of the U.S. competition. That distinction is the Rattlesnake Tri Series No. 3 in August. But the Lake-to-Lake is USA Triathlon's Rocky Mountain regional championship so there were some fast MFs there. As I told people beforehand, I anticipated getting my clock cleaned. I thought finishing in the top third of the field and having some decent transitions would be a realistic goal, and I was right.

But first, I arrived later than I'd anticipated and I still managed to forget the heart-rate monitor strap. That's unfortunate because I put out a very good effort and would have loved to have seen the feedback during the race. Oh well. And because I arrived later than I'd planned, the transition area was almost standing-room only. An official directed me to a rack in the "back" of the transition area, which put my bike steps away from the back entrance. Score! I jogged a warmup and started getting my stuff together when I heard the siren designating the start of the first wave.

Amazingly I wasn't rushed at all. I worked my legs into my Orca sausage casing/wetsuit as I walked to the beach; it was 6:30 and my wave didn't leave for another 20 minutes. It was 6:45 when I finally zipped up my suit with my arms dangling at my side like gymnast Shawn Johnson. This thing is that tight. Some witty banter with other guys in my wave followed, as did the exit of the first swimmer (18 minutes for 1.5 kilometers!), and then we were off.

This race puts us in a 62-degree in-town lake, fed by runoff from the mountains. Thus, I was glad to have two swim caps on. Once I got wide of the field I got in a rhythm and didn't get assaulted in the water, a novelty. Now, time suspends itself when I'm in the water, partially because I love to swim (unlike a lot of triathletes) and partially because I can't look at my watch. I generally get out of the water with no clue as to how long I've been in, except to see the different colored caps of the waves ahead of me, and I noticed quite a few green, blue, yellow and red caps around me as I got out of the water. That meant I was catching up to people who head started as much as 15 minutes ahead of me so, harsh as it sounds, I knew I was beating some people. I then looked at my watch to see 23:48.

Or something. I just noticed the 23:XX. That would be by two minutes my fastest swim of that distance. I pumped my fist once before remembering I had to peel myself out of my wetsuit, and that the swim finish timing pad wasn't until just outside the transition area, about a 150-yard jog. I walked along, unzipping the suit and pulling my arms out before I started running. When I got to my bike I slipped out of the suit in what passed for no time; you have no idea how hard it is to get out of this thing. And before long I was on the bike.

The bike leg in Loveland is 30 miles and takes you into the foothills above Loveland and Fort Collins. While the first lake in the name of the race is Loveland Lake, the second one is Horsetooth Reservoir. It takes quite some time to get to Horsetooth and an awful lot of it is uphill. You can spend the first 20 miles of the ride in your little chainring, which is what I typically do. I'm a spinner (like Lance, as opposed to a masher like Jan Ullrich) so this course sets up nicely for me. I passed a lot of people on these slight grades but was cautious on the screaming downhills that followed. You have to see this course to believe it, it's so beautiful. Downhill hairpin turns, some flat hammer territory, suburbia -- Loveland Lake-to-Lake has it all.

I made it to T2 in time to see the winner finish. Told you there were some fast MFs here. I jogged out of T2 but settled into a pace pretty easily. Had no clue how fast I was going until after the turnaround, when a guy I had passed caught up to me again. He said we were running 7:30 miles, which again, felt comfortable. It felt good to actually race a guy, even if he had a 20-minute head start and I was going to finish ahead of him in the results. We ran side-by-side for about a mile-and-a-half, until I slowed to get water at 5 miles and he sped off. Good on 'im. He had it in that last mile and I didn't.

There wasn't much of a sprint to the finish but I did pick up the pace a little bit, a true sign that I need to do some speedwork. I crossed the line in 2:37:40, a PR for this course by about a minute, and thinking back to 2003, when I raced this place for the first time, I'm in better shape now than I was then. The 10K run was 45:54, more than 2:30 faster than the standalone 10K at Bolder Boulder.

So along with faster transitions, I learned I can race a bit. That will come in handy this weekend at the Cheyenne Sprint Triathlon.

Home-course advantage, my butt: Laramie Duathlon

OK, so maybe I am only posting when I race. That's easy to do when you're racing four consecutive weeks. Let me say that though I'm not traveling a lot for these races -- four straight weeks of racing with no overnight stays? Score! -- I can't imagine crisscrossing the globe for ITU races the way the pros do. It's hard enough to get rebooted for shorter events within two hours' drive. Mt hat's off to those boys and girls.

Saturday's Laramie Duathlon represented the second-shortest I've ever gone from front door to start line. The top honor goes to the F.E. Warren Triathlon, which took place on the F.E. Warren Air Force Base, just outside of Cheyenne. That was about two miles from my house but I did have the added bonus of explaining to the guard what a triathlon was, since there was no advance pub for this race at all. Saturday, I rode my bike 3.5 miles to Kiwanis Park in West Laramie for the duathlon.

But before I did that, I rode my bike for 45 minutes, just to get the blood flowing. Then I rode the 3.5 miles over the railroad tracks and under I-80 to the park, where I got my number, set up transition, and went for about a two-mile jog. Because this race was so short and I was doing it for nothing more than a measured brick, I thought it would be good to get in something resembling a workout beforehand. Overall, I benefited from the extra miles but my race suffered.

So the transition area was set up on a dirt parking lot. Because it's been a rainy spring I would either be brushing mud off my feet or kicking it out of my cycling shoes for the first part of the ride. Eh, I'll run in my cycling shoes, briefly.

Now, the literature for the race -- namely the Web site (cyclewyoming.org/du.htm), such as it is -- called the first run a 2-kilometer run. That was the case the night before when I checked the site to confirm what time I needed to be there. The course map still said 2 kilometers though the course was changed for some reason. So when the race director yelled "go," I was all set for a 2K run. Thus I was a little shocked when people seriously took off sprinting. Turns out it was a 1K run so I picked up the pace after the first turn, and then promptly dialed it back when I felt like the bear jumped on my back (high school track runners who ran a 400, ever, know what I'm talking about).

I was at a jog when I strolled into transition, already thinking "bike." I yanked my feet out of my shoes and with the right one came one of the insoles. Fun. I tried stuffing back in and I'm pretty sure about 20 people passed me in that first transition. That's fine, I thought, I'll just crush the bike. It was a rare windless day so any of the legions riding mountain bikes were ripe for the picking. Indeed, I lost track of the number of people I passed on the 25-kilometer, out-and-back cycle portion, so I focused on keeping my heart rate reasonable. That is, when I wasn't trying to pass more people. The two were mutually exclusive, however.

Anyway, I was about 15th when I made it back to transition for the 5K run. Got my feet into my running shoes with no problem, surprisingly, and I took off on the run, though about three people got places on me in transition. My transitions are glacial and need work.

Oof. Again, the lactic acid set in within a few strides so I dialed it back, reminding myself that this was just a workout, and then end result was not as important as... other things. I felt like I was jogging and my heart rate was in the 180s for much of that second run. What the hell? I finished with a time of 23:35 for the 5K, 2:35 slower than six days prior. The cooldown jog, in barefeet around the three little-kid soccer fields, actually felt better than any point during the race.

Anyway, I got third in my age group and brought home a white ribbon. Now, while I've gotten age-group hardware the past two weeks, this Saturday's Loveland Lake-to-Lake will be entirely different matter altogether. It's Colorado's de-facto state championship and I expect to get my clock cleaned quite nicely. From this race I'm just looking for physiological gains. And maybe some faster transitions.

Need some cowbell: Greeley Triathlon report

Don't get the idea that I'll blog only when I race. It's just worked out that way recently, between a work trip and a tiny bit of training despair. Plus, this is the month where I do four races in a span of 21 days, or if you count Bolder Boulder, five races in 35 days. So there will be at least one blog a week between now and then. Bitchin', right?

So yesterday was the first triathlon of the season. I did the Greeley Triathlon in the eponymous town in Colorado in 2003, while my parents were visiting. I don't remember a whole lot of the course other than the swim at Centennial Park's pool. It was short and it hurt like a MF. Since then, the race is under new management and the course is different. It's still short, though, and it effing hurts.

Mind you, my training breaks down like this: I hadn't swum in two weeks for one reason or another; I hadn't biked for a week while I was at Yellowstone for work, though I paroled it from the shop and took it out for some hills Friday, followed by a 2:15 wind-fest on Saturday; and I ran once while at Yellowstone, though I hiked around five miles a day on average. I was racing purely because I signed up. And because I wanted to race, I wanted to get the synapses firing, I wanted to have my body respond to my number being written on me in toxic magic marker, and I wanted to match up with the rest of the world (or northern Colorado, as it were). However, I decided I wouldn't wear a watch, as both my old-school and new-school Timex Ironmans have dead batteries and I haven't bothered to fix them. My heart-rate monitor has a strap that wraps around my chest, and I haven't figured out how tight I can get it to stay on during a swim without suffocating myself. So I would be competing on what Colorado cross country coach Mark Wetmore calls "sensory data," going as fast as you feel comfortable.

The night before the race, I shaved my legs. Those who know me well know I'm militantly anti leg-shaving for guys because I don't think it serves any purpose other than fashion, and I've never been one for aesthetics. If shaving legs stood between me and a spot in Kona, I'd think about it. Might even give up beer and Pepsi before mowing the blond lawn on my legs. But on Saturday I was bored and there was a pool swim, and thanks to my years of high school swimming I know for a fact there's a distinct advantage when gliding through the water with smooth legs. Sunday, I figured I'd need every advantage I could get. Fortified by two bottles of Sunshine Wheat, a little bit of Bailey's on the rocks, and nearly asleep with boredom, I grabbed the Sensor Excel and scraped away. They look pretty good, if I do say so myself.

My sleep ended up being a four-hour nap. I never get much sleep the night before a race because I'm always so excited to line up and go. That's why, the night before the night before, I blow off the alarm and slumber away (learned that in HS track). So after my four-hour nap that passed for sleep, I loaded up the car, secured my newly cleaned and tuned-up ride (thanks, Pedal House in Laramie!) to the roof of my Honda Civic Hybrid, and headed east and south. I caught the backside of a fairly serious thunderstorm with hail, and clutched at the thought of my bike getting pelted with frozen ice balls. Fortunately, no damage was sustained. Whew.

I did a longer warmup than normal, as six years of Ironman training has finally made me realize I need to be sweating with a rapid pulse before a sprint. Half-irons and irons offer a nice, long warmup in the form of a swim. Sunday, a hard 500 meters wasn't going to cut it so I did about 20 minutes between the three disciplines.

With the pool swim comes the most creative solution for getting everyone on the course in good order. Entrants provide a predicted swim time for the 500-meter swim, and the race numbers reflect this. For example, the fastest predicted swim time gets No. 1 and so on. I was No. 48, though I predicted my swim time when I had been in Laramie for two months and was still gasping for every breath of pool air. Nine minutes seemed reasonable at the time. Every 10 seconds a competitor pushed off the wall, though the race director increased the interval when things got bottlenecked. I got to see the first couple of guys leave the pool, and I observed that almost everyone ahead of me did flip turns; I was at last among friends.

So I pushed off and my shorts rolled down my waist. I'll call out the brand name because this was why I stopped swimming in them regularly. Louis Garneau tri-shorts have a looped drawstring that loosens and tightens at will. The problem is you can't knot them because not only does the drawstring congeal like cement in the water, now you have to figure out how to get them on. I knotted them somewhat loosely late last year and did pool work in them, but got tired of them almost falling off with every push-off, so I saved them for races. Well, this was a race, so I wore them. And I ended up having to shuffle off the wall instead of truly pushing to spare the crowd a shot of my white ass, and possibly my fellows.

I passed four people ahead of me in the water, hammered the last lap, hopped out of the pool (Christ in a cartoon, it's cold!) and ran to my bike. I had some trouble with my top but you try putting a dry top on a wet body. Off I went for the 11.8-mile bike ride. I took the bottle cages off my bike for the short race, thinking I'd just hydrate well beforehand and grab drinks in each transition, which worked too well. It was a two-lap course so I spent the first lap just hammering on my big gear and doing recon for the second lap. I caught this guy on a much nicer bike and we went back and forth for a bit before I managed to get into a groove. On the second lap I used my knowledge and picked up the pace, dropping off the big gear for a minor climb and the turn to the transition area.

There weren't very many bikes but I took my time and found my rack easily, as opposed to rushing through it. My feet found the shoes nicely, I grabbed my shades (it was overcast but I was thinking positive), and dashed off. The guy on the sweet bike beat me out of transition by a few seconds so I figured I'd have a pacing point. I stayed with him for a while but fell back because the tiny bit of fluid I drank before the race was sloshing around in my stomach. And I was starting to hurt a bit. Wah. I just kept it steady, took a little water halfway through the run, and picked it up when I made the turn for home.

The results came out about 20 minutes after I finished. Well, a draft of the results. They had me second in my age group, men 35-39 years old, arguably the toughest in the sport at any race. No, I thought, that won't last. There are people still on the course. Another 20 minutes passed and some more results were printed. Still second. I talked to the guy who started right before me in the swim. He was second in his age group, too, after riding a flat tire for five miles of the bike. He said there would have to be some serious cyclists and runners still out there, and to just accept the results and be glad. No, that's not in my nature. Where are the other 35-39 males today, I asked? There was a sprint at the Boulder Reservoir Saturday, so some of them might have done that. And they couldn't re-boot a day later for another sprint. Wussies.

The last finisher crossed and the awards started. Lo and behold, I went up and accepted my prize, a big, red cowbell. Bitchin'. First hardware in a triathlon since 2005, when I was the third Wyoming finisher in the Best in the US race at the Loveland Lake-to-Lake Triathlon. At that time I told people that was all they needed to know about the lack of triathletes in Wyoming. Once again, I fall back on having finished well in a weak field. But as my friend Gail said, all you have to do is beat whoever is there on that day rather than worry about who didn't show. Brilliant.

Done, done, on to the next one...