Race PREport: Ironman Arizona 2019

I registered for Ironman Arizona 2019 the day after Ironman Arizona 2018 – the first day it opened. (It does sell out quickly so I was on it.) I wanted to do a late season full knowing I would be riding high and inspired to get after it in the post-Kona glow. The options therefore were Florida or Arizona, and I’ve got an unearned jellyfish phobia so Arizona it was. Plus people love IMAZ, it seemed like the obvious choice.

Then the hip, the Boston DNS, the IMVA DNF, the Ironman Lake Placid DNS, and the ongoing difficulty to recover. My doctor and PT both warned me early that Lake Placid wouldn’t happen, they said Arizona was a probably. Over the course of this journey I first thought they were crazy to say Lake Placid wouldn’t happen, then I thought they were crazy to say that Arizona would.

By September I was awash in insecurity, unable to build the run miles, still stuck on an anti-gravity treadmill week after week. Kona was indeed the inspiration I knew it would be, but it also sprung a well of deeper doubts – long and short-term doubts. Then the flu waylaid me for over a week a month out from race day and all hope seemed lost. At one point in late October Josh gently asked whether I was sure about doing the race and I insisted I was, that I couldn’t handle another 2019 DNS disappointment, but on the inside I was now drowning in uncertainty.

So that’s the energy I carried into Arizona! I managed to build my run mileage up to one fifteen mile run a few weeks before the race, which felt totally insufficient. Between the flu and a cold snap that forced me repeatedly indoors to ride I didn’t feel ready for anything, except ironically the swim. I headed west with a lot of physical and emotional baggage and no idea whether I’d see a finish line.

Race Day Eve Eve

I landed in Phoenix Thursday evening and a friend from college, Dayna, picked me up at the airport. We hadn’t seen each other in ages and had the best dinner catching up and comparing life notes. We ate at a huge spot in Tempe called Culinary Dropout and gorged ourselves on fried chicken and crafty cocktails. I’m grateful for the good food and company to pull me out of my anxieties and self-loathing for at least a few hours.

Dinner with Dayna!

The next morning I had to be up early for some work calls – good for staying on east coast time – and then took a Lyft to the expo mid-morning (mountain time). The first volunteer I saw at packet pickup had a massive Great Dane service dog which immediately quieted my nerves. Just being in the vicinity of Great Danes and a fellow Great Dane mom makes me happy! Packet pickup was very quick and easy which also lessened some of my stress.

Over the course of my femoral neck stress fracture diagnosis and recovery I met a couple people online who were in the same injury mess, and one of those people was Ashley (@a.g.isthenewo.g. on insta) who lives outside Phoenix. She joined me at the expo and getting to meet her in real life was fantastic. She’s one of the few people who really understands the hellishness of this last year and she has been so generous with her time and support. We got to spend a few hours together, perusing all the fun booths at the expo and hitting up one of the many cute restaurants in the area for lunch.

Getting to spend some QT with Ashley in person

Spending time with Ashley boosted my anxious spirits. The expo had some great booths, and the ASU-adjacent neighborhood was a nice place to spend the day. The weather was also great and I’d been fearing the predicted chilly temps on top of my own lack of preparedness. I started to feel better about things and wondered why I’d been so panicked. I thought to myself, even if I wasn’t as prepared as I wanted to be, I was fit enough to finish, and experienced enough to finish faster than I had at Chattanooga in 2016.

Also got to see Speed Sherpa teammie Jon at the expo…
…and put the feet up for a bit!

Scott got in that afternoon and we checked into an Airbnb I had found right next to the race – the location could not have been better. After a day at the expo I was feeling pretty good, excitement had supplanted fear for the most part. I felt better about the temperature, I felt energized by finally being at the race, and I knew I had good people around me.

Also the Airbnb dishtowels said this – what?! Total sign from the tri-gods?!

That night the Ironman Foundation happened to be having their annual Kona Afterparty fundraiser in Mesa, which is basically in Phoenix. (I was learning that everything in Arizona [except I guess Tucson] is basically in Phoenix: Mesa, Tempe, Scottsdale – they’re all in Phoenix and I’m not sure why they sport different names acting like they’re not just part of the same metro area.)

I’d been wrestling with whether to buy tickets to this Iron party. On the one hand it sounded really cool – there would be pros there, and Mike Reilly and other cool tri-celebs. On the other hand it was two nights before an ironman that I wasn’t entirely prepared for and staying in and sleeping seemed like the more responsible course of action. Ultimately though I decided it was too cool an opportunity to pass up. (And I’m thankful Scott was willing to humor my serious tri-nerdiness.)

Tri-celebs! (Who are different than normal celebs in that they’re not really famous to anyone else.)

The event consisted of a seriously tri-dorky red carpet with hors d’oeuvres and drinks, followed by a program celebrating Kona 2019, the Foundation’s charity projects, a silent auction offering entry to Kona 2020, and a tri-celeb panel (that included Roderick Sewell! squeeee!), all emceed by Mike Reilly.

Reserved seats like the Oscars except, again, I realize these people aren’t celebrities to anyone but me and a few other tri-dweebs.

I got to sit next to Lindsey Corbin and other pros there included Sarah Crowley, Heather Jackson, Ben Hoffman, Paula Fraser, and Mark Allen. It was a totally cheesy and inspiring evening, and while it was maybe more excitement than is advisable a few days before a race, it totally revved my tri engine. (But no I was not the one who bid $40k to race Kona, still really hoping to earn my spot there one day without having to raid my 401K or remortgage my home…)

Tri-“celeb” panel
Last time I was this close to Mike Reilly we were both in our underwear! (That sounds wrong – Kona Underpants Run you pervs)

Race Day Eve

I had big, carefully thought out plans for Race Day Eve: I was going to sleep till around 7:30 or 8:00 – getting at least 8 hours of shuteye after the IM Foundation fundraiser – go get Koop out of tribiketransport right when it opened at 9am, ride for 30, drop him off and be in the water at 10am leaving me plenty of time before the swim practice closed at 11. Dayna was going to swing by the expo around 11:30 with her pups – puppy kisses are a critical component to race readiness – and my dad would be arriving from Atlanta around mid-day so that left plenty of time to lunch, prepare gear bags, and get any final errands done.

I was up, dressed to bike, and breakfasting by 8am as rigorously planned. Then I thought, ‘hey! I should read the athlete guide!’ As I sipped my coffee I perused the guide on the Ironman app and right as the caffeine hit my bloodstream I realized that I needed to drop off my bike and run bags much earlier than I thought – really I needed to drop them off at the same time I racked my bike, and I needed to rack my bike between noon and 1pm based on my bib number.

I pulled out the many color-coded bags that come in a full Iron packet and tried not to panic as I spread them out on the living room floor and affixed my number to each. Then I sat on my knees and just stared at them, feeling totally stuck as to how to proceed. I texted Josh for help as my stomach began its unwelcome nervous calisthenics. Josh called me right back and we spent about twenty minutes talking through each transition as well as special needs.

My brain was in such a panic-induced fog I don’t think I could have properly packed without his calm guidance. Transition bag discussions however led naturally to a robust discussion (disagreement) about what I would wear on the bike the next day. I was very worried about being too cold after the frigid lake swim, on a windy course that would be in the 50s when I started my ride. Like so many women (and some men!) I have Raynaud’s which causes certain toes and fingers to go painfully numb in even mild temperatures, and I really didn’t want a flare up when staring down 112 bike miles.  I thought I was ready though, with a long-sleeved bolero, leg warmers I’d made out of Scott’s old tube socks (tres chic) bike shoe covers for my toes, and rubber work gloves that I planned to stuff with handwarmers. Josh however was aghast that I didn’t have a plan to cover my core.

A typical Raynaud’s flare for me – middle and ring fingers get it the worst and go numb even if moderately chilly weather and even wearing gloves. Same with outside two toes on both feet. It’s very uncomfortable.

I explained that I planned to swim in a bathing suit under my wetsuit and pull my kit on in transition so I thought my core would be ok but he wasn’t having this plan at all. He insisted that I swim in my kit, promising I would regret having to pull a tight race kit onto my wet post-swim body. He said the kit would dry quickly – it’s literally made to do that – but that even dry if I didn’t have a plan to keep my core warm I was looking at cramping and a DNF. I had brought a Speed Sherpa cycling vest but I really didn’t want to wear it – it fits me really loose, perfect to put over other layers on a really cold day, but baggy to wear over just my kit. I know it’s silly but I hated the aesthetics of it and didn’t want  to look like I had a giant gut in 100 miles of bike pics.

I hesitantly agreed to wear the vest but wasn’t really convinced as I hung up the phone. I decided to call Sara and Ellen and get their take on the situation. Scott asked me if I was calling around until I got the answer I wanted, to which I unabashedly admitted yes, confident that one or both my gals would back me up and tell me to leave the vest.

Neither did though. They were understanding about the long-lastingness of race pics but both agreed with Josh that covering my core was more important. Sara suggested I search the expo for a smaller vest – maybe even a cheap one I could ditch at an aid station if I felt warm enough – and that idea appeased my vanity. Plus I had to acknowledge the fact that all three of these voices I respect so much were speaking in unison.

With my wardrobe (mostly) settled and gear bags packed I headed down to the race, only now it was nearing 10am and I realized I would have to swim first to not miss the 11 o’clock practice cutoff. The whole carefully-planned morning was already off the rails.

I can’t explain exactly why but as we left the apartment for the short walk I grabbed my timing chip and fastened it around my left ankle. I am constantly looking for my timing chip on race mornings so I think I had decided to just wear it until go-time, and I wondered if I would need it to drop my gear bags and bike off. I’m so glad I grabbed it as it turned out I needed it for the practice swim. I saw volunteers turning people away at the dock for not having theirs. If Scott or I had had to run back to the airbnb to get it – even with the proximity of the apartment – I don’t think I would have made it into the water that day.

I’m also glad I decided (similarly last minute) to don my new neoprene swim cap. It looks like a 1920s leather football helmet and I felt pretty silly and uncomfortable with the tight velcro chin strap, but given the water temp and the Raynaud’s and my admitted wimpishness it was the right call. I was also wearing the neoprene booties I’d bought a few seasons ago but never had cause to wear before.

As neoprened as I’ve ever been!

I got on the long swim practice line around 10:15. It moved pretty quickly – probably thanks in part to the number of people being turned away without their timing chips – and within ten minutes I was sidling down the ramp into Tempe Town Lake. I marveled at how calm I felt about the practice swim, still riding off Friday’s fear-turned-excitement of finally being at the race. Then I hit the water.

At first the booties and wetsuit shielded my senses, but as soon as I was chest deep and trying to swim my confidence dissolved. Or froze over. The water felt stingingly cold. I dipped my face in to swim properly but had to quickly abandon that plan as my lungs tightened in an asthmatic-adjacent lockdown. Instead I awkwardly alternated between breast stroke and freestyle with my head above water, not wanting to risk a full attack. Plus we all think about the men and women who seem perfectly fit only to lose their lives in the swim portion of a race. Having had heart surgery in my 20s I’m especially aware of those sad stories.

I reminded myself that I’d raced in Maine and New Jersey this year and last in water that was only a few degrees warmer than this supposed 63* degrees, but my mind couldn’t convince my lungs and limbs that all was ok. At Escape the Cape in New Jersey it had taken a few minutes to get comfortable but I had eventually warmed up and had a pretty decent swim; I kept waiting and willing the same to happen but every time I tried putting my face in I felt the same pulmonary panic and pulled back.

*59-61 degrees if you consult my and others’ garmins. 

I continued my inefficient flailing for a hundred meters until I did something I’ve never done before and grabbed onto a security raft near one of the buoys. I took a few moments trying to calm myself down – even hit pause on my Garmin after a a minute or two – and took in the scene. There were five other people hanging onto the raft looking shell-shocked, and at least half of the hundreds of other swimmers were doing my same pained vertical crawl. I watched the chaotic tableau and tried to give myself a mental pep talk. I also had a pee hoping it would both warm and relax me. After three or four minutes I got back on my way.

It took me another fifty meters and the turnaround before I could coax my head into the water. By that time I was halfway through the 500 meter practice course and didn’t have much time to get fully acclimated to actual swimming in the cold. When I dragged myself out of the lake 15 minutes had passed, meaning I had just swum 500 meters at the blistering rate of 100m/3:00 minutes.

Cue the panic.

Obviously the water wasn’t going to get any warmer in the next 18 hours so I began to descend rapidly into self-centered despair. That disconcerting swim set the tone for the rest of race day eve; a feeling of impending doom lingered beneath everything I did. I felt like I might cry at any moment and my mind roiled with worst case swim scenarios. I didn’t see how I would get through 2.4 miles in that water and started planning for 2 hours in the water at 3:00/100m. Hell, what if I didn’t even make the cutoff?

I found Scott who had my bike bags. I shivered and shook from the lake’s straight talk as I peeled off layers of neoprene. My mind was spinning when we made it to tribiketransport around 11am. Dayna and her pups were due to the race any second now, my dad was in a taxi from the airport, and swim-be-damned I still needed to get a ride in to make sure Koop was ok after his trip west.

Koooooop

Transport was quick in handing me my beloved and reaffixing his pedals. As I pulled my helmet and shoes on my dad arrived and I was so happy to see him, though still too obsessed with that terrible swim to properly let him know how grateful I was he had made the trip. I left him and Scott for 10 minutes to ride up and down the riverwalk and click through all my gears making sure everything was in working order.

As I dismounted Dayna arrived with Pax and Piper and those initial hyper puppy kisses may have been the only time all day that my mind relented on its swim-doom obsession. Dayna and the furbebes accompanied me into the expo to seek out a more flattering bike vest and I found a well-fitted black number at the Betty Designs tent. It was more than I had planned on spending but I figured I would get a lot of wear out of the sleek LBV to justify the unplanned cost. Our women’s Speed Sherpa kits are made by Betty so at a minimum it looked great.

Koop and Pipes and Pax! <3

With my wardrobe set and my bike in working order Dayna and the pups gave me goodbye and good luck hugs. I immediately missed my friend and her frenchies, but no sooner had they left than Sarah Crowley of all people walked by. She was by herself and I took a chance and called out to her. She stopped and talked to me for a few minutes. We chatted about the fundraiser the night before and she kindly posed for a picture. She is so epicly cool.

Sarah Crowley! I don’t care if she’s not a celebrity to you, she is the shit!

Finally I filed into the long-but-quick line to rack Koop and drop my gear. The line wrapped all the way around transition, snaking back into the expo, but in less than ten minutes I was wheeling Koopa towards our rack, bike and run bags each hanging awkwardly off a shoulder.

I tried to log mental notes about where my bike rack was in relation to transition landmarks – namely the porta potties. I checked and rechecked everything in my bike and run bags, mentally walking through each transition repeatedly. Feeling semi-confident that I had everything I needed where I needed it I proceeded to the transition exit, only to turn around right before I got there to run back and check my bags once more, convinced something crucial like my helmet or my bike or run shoes was missing.

Koop ready and located near the end of a bank of portapotties – easy to find!

Finally I rejoined Scott and my dad outside transition and we went and found lunch. I tried to put on a happy-ish face while choking down calories but it was a struggle. I still felt barely in control of my tear ducts. The one bright spot of lunch was that Ben Hoffman was a couple tables away. Pros everywhere! I let him eat without bugging him for a picture but I was excited to see so many tri-celebs. (I know, celebs to me only.)

After lunch my dad went back to his hotel for a bit while Scott and I hit up Target for a few last things – mostly food for the morning and for special needs, and a bottle of wine for after the race. (I viewed this as either celebratory finish booze or drown your sorrows DNF sour grapes.)

We got cleaned up at the Airbnb and were about to leave to meet my dad for our early dinner when the dam finally broke.

I had been getting wonderful messages from  friends all day. Their encouragement and faith in me made me feel like I was going to let them all down. At one point I said to Scott that it seemed a lot of people had more confidence in me than I had in myself. My anxiety had snowballed through the day until, getting out of the shower before dinner, I found a message from Ellen who always knows just what to say and I lost it.

I swear Ellen always know what sort of self-sabotaging treachery is in my head and how to squash it. She offers up tough, insightful love like no one I know. (She’s gonna be an incredible mom.) In a long series of texts she gifted me many pearls, but the one that finally broke me was this: “you’re not racing with any other past version of yourself.” My mom said something really similar over the summer before Nationals that also hit me like a ton of brick workouts. They both could see that all I’ve been doing is comparing myself with where I thought I would be now – where I thought I should be. But life had intervened and I’m not the person or athlete I expected to be when I signed up and set big goals for myself. I read that message from Ellen and the tears that had been building since dragging my defeated shivering body from the practice swim fell hard and fast. At first I was just crying from feeling love from a friend I admire but soon I was just crying from everything. It felt like the whole year of disappointments needed to spill out of my eyeballs in that one piteous moment. Scott hugged me silently and let me ball it out.

After I composed myself we had a nice dinner with my dad at a great spot, Fellow Osteria, and the meal and company took my mind off things for at least a little while. (Absolutely recommend to anyone looking to carb up before IMAZ, or to anyone looking for legit pizza and pasta and a decent wine list in Scottsdale; which again, is really just Phoenix.) After dinner Josh and his girls sent me the most amazing video of encouragement – which of course yielded more tears but they were less existential.

After dinner I mostly just had to veg and wind down. The nice thing about full Irons and having to drop gear bags off early is you don’t have the usual triathlon-eve transition bag packing fest. Instead we found some Law & Order SVU – it’s pre-race tradition even if I’m all the way across the country from Tiff – and I tried to quiet my brain.

I also instituted a new totally sane and not stalkeresque tradition: I put on my bff Clarice’s t-shirt that I still had from her handing it to me the morning of Kona and ate a frozen snickers bar like she likes to do before a race. (It wasn’t a  snickers ice cream bar so my new tradition is different enough to not be creepy, right? [That being said she’s probably never getting this shirt back, it’s become too important to my lifestyle.])

Just like my bff! (Except for the winning m AG part.)

I was tucked into bed at a responsible-seeming 9pm. It would have been responsible anyway if I’d been able to fall asleep. But actual slumber was elusive. I lay there not even able to keep my eyes closed for hours. A few times I drifted off for a few fitful minutes, but mostly I just lay awake and stressed and tried not to cry or puke. I was still awake, trying to keep that snickers bar down, when race day eve officially gave way to race day…

 

What Kona Gave to Me

Kona gave me more than just this perfect view!

Backstory…

…because I know you all think I’m crazy to have traveled all the way to Hawaii for a race I wasn’t doing…and you’re not wrong. (Not saying you’re right either.)

Cause how good does Koop look in Hawaii?

The day after Kona 2018 my coach, Josh, qualified for the big dance at Ironman Louisville. I screamed at my phone all day tracking him, texting with his wife, Erica, and other teammates. I was in the middle of a trainer ride that afternoon as he went from a strong bike to one of the best runs of his life, picking off the men in his age group to battle his way onto the podium and ultimately to 4th place out of some 200 dudes age 40-44. (Holy hokas men in their 40s love them some Ironman.) As I pedaled and yelled at my phone a friend at the race informed me there were four Kona slots for Josh’s age group, a message I then relayed to Erica. She got to call and tell him that epic news when he finished – extra special as Josh had no idea how well he’d raced. The next morning at the award ceremony those four slots were confirmed and Josh said hell yes and punched his ticket to Hawaii. That same day I suggested to Scott we could go with them and miracle of miracles Scott was into it. And so we invited ourselves into Josh’s dream and vacation and a full year in advance we made plans to be in paradise for the Ironman World Championships of 2019.

Josh in Kona! Thank you coach for this reason to be in Hawaii!

With that race-cation decision made by mid-October of 2018 I pulled some more major race triggers. I was already signed up for Ironman Lake Placid in July 2019, but I knew being at the World Championships was gonna have me amped and inspired, and I had already been mulling the challenge of a double Iron year. And so I decided to add a late season full – somewhere I could spend my Kona energy, and hopefully fitness. I hoped that I would be in a place to go for a top 10 finish – maybe even a podium if I really got my bike house in order.

Then the whole hip fracture thing, the Lake Placid DNS, the complete and utter destruction of my run. You know all about that stuff, I talk about it constantly. My season changed, my plans, my abilities, but I was still going to Kona. After not even starting at Placid I gave up on my lofty performance goals for Arizona too, but being able to at least start that race took on greater significance. So I decided to stick to my original plan to make island time training and inspiration time and I shipped my tri bike, Koopa Troop, to Hawaii via tribiketransport.

And here’s where it’s more than fair to think I’m out of my mind as it wasn’t a thrifty vacay decision. But renting a bike isn’t an option when you’re 4’10” and not biking over a ten day trip also isn’t an option six weeks out from your own full Ironman. Plus we were renting a house right off the infamous Queen Kaahumanu highway – she was beckoning to me to come ride.

In the weeks leading up to Kona my feelings about Arizona and whether or not I’d be ready were all over the map. Ironman Atlantic City 70.3 in mid-September went better than hoped and boosted my spirits and confidence, but afterward I battled a lot of self doubt never letting myself forget that while 140.6 is mathematically twice 70.3, it is more than twice as hard, and that 13.1 mile run had felt like I was really living up to the Atlantic City setting and rolling the dice. I was still stuck on the anti-gravity treadmill for one run a week to add the miles on slowly and safely, so how was I going to get through 26.2. And of course the swim scaries are always close at hand – my only previous 140.6 had included a downstream swim and Arizona was going to be freezing and unassisted. Still the sense that I couldn’t face another DNS outweighed all other thoughts.

So I shoved those doubts to the side as I shipped Koopa off to Hawaii and packed plenty of swimbikerun gear into my suitcases. (Plural. I brought alotta stuff.) I was 50% sure I could do Arizona, 100% sure that I was coming at it underprepared, and equally sure that I had to try. We landed in Hawaii 7 weeks to the day from IMAZ and I felt in need of all the trilove I could get out of Kona.

And Kona gave me what I needed. (Mahalo, Pele!)

Aloha and mahalo, Hawaii!

Arriving the afternoon of Sunday, Oct. 6th we had almost a full week until race day, so after Josh and I retrieved our steeds from tribiketransport on Monday, I had no time for excuses. I would have to drop Koop back off for the trip home the day after race day (Sunday the 13th) and needed to make the most of my time. But let me be very clear: I was scared to make the most of my time.

The Queen 

Koopa, meet Queen K. Queen K, please don’t hurt us.

The Queen K, the highway on which the bike portion of the Ironman World Championships takes place, is famously fickle. She’s beautiful, with smooth pavement and a (mostly) wide shoulder, running through lava fields with epic views of mountains and ocean. She’s also the windiest witch whose gales are unpredictable and merciless, and she climbs and descends thousands of unrelenting feet in every direction. Triathletes the world over know all about the Queen K long before they ever meet her, and I was so very scared to make her acquaintance, sure she would judge me unworthy.

My badass speed queen bff, Clarice was staying with us for the first few days so on Tuesday we decided to head out for our first tussle with the Queen together. Our rental house was in a gated community right off the highway so easy-ish access. I say ish because to get to the road we had to get down a hill so steep even a bike titan like Clarice didn’t feel safe riding down it. So after a morning swim practice we grabbed our wheels, pulled on our cleats, and began the slow walk down to a safer pitch to mount.

We didn’t plan to ride the whole workout together – my bff is lightyears faster than I am – but we would at least start together and I hoped I could hang with her long enough to get more comfortable in this intimidating setting. But Pele wasn’t about to extend me that grace. As we clomped awkwardly downhill one of Clarice’s bike cleats fell apart. She was forced to turnaround and go deal with her equipment, and I was forced to descend the mountain to my destiny alone. I felt like the famed mad Queen had somehow arranged this obstacle just to mess with me and get me alone, like a lioness hunting the weakest in the herd. I felt personally attacked by the Queen Kaahumanu Highway.

That first ride I put in a little over twenty miles and got a taste of the steady flow of vehicular traffic including the large trucks that created violent wind vortexes as they flew by. I got a taste too of the infamous winds that changed without warning, and the desolate Martian lava fields that comprise the landscape north of the airport. It wasn’t enough of a taste to discourage or fully terrify me; it was actually the perfect – albeit lonely – introduction. I allowed myself to sit up most of the first ten miles heading out to get more comfortable, then tried to drop into aero for the return ten. I arrived back at our community – after a harrowing wrong turn that sent me through a parking lot with unforgiving speed bumps and then scraping my way up a steep climb with very little momentum – feeling proud of my Queen K baptism. I dismounted for the long march to the top of our hill but luckily Josh came to my rescue in his Tahoe, sparing me the hike.

Full service shaka coach showing up in the ‘hoe!
Because this hill is stupid.

I felt broken in by the highway and (more) capable of handling the week of riding now. The second day I followed Josh out to a beach some 30 miles away, parking and convening in the lot there before we would each go on our individual way. I couldn’t help but take terrified stock of every long grinding hill on the drive out so that by the time I pulled my Jeep into the Hapuna Beach lot I had sweat out most of the previous day’s bike confidence.

Josh suggested 50 miles for me, which felt massive given the setting and the seeming mountains I’d just driven up and down to get here. I winced and moaned at the mileage and he snapped back that I had shipped my damn bike to Hawaii and needed to ride it. I suggested 40 miles as if we were bartering for workouts, which isn’t really how our relationship is supposed to work. He gave me stern Josh voice and responded, ‘at a minimum.’ (Honestly tough-love-Josh is probably my favorite Josh.)

As I got going I was surprised by how strong and brave I felt. I found my aero bars immediately and stayed low even as I took on those ascents, and even scarier, those descents, that had spooked me on the drive out. I ended up putting in closer to Josh’s 50 miles that day and got to end the whole damn glorious demanding ride at Hapuna Beach where the water is postcard perfect. Day two felt like a massive success.

Wish all rides could end in this paradise.

Driving back after some quality beach time I took stock of the hills I’d just summited; they still seemed substantial in the car and I patted myself on the back for having handled them. I also congratulated myself on my apparent mastery of the winds that rattled the jeep, especially with the passage of each bigrig. I got home thinking, Liz – 2, Queen K – 0.

Oh but she would have the last word. Words plural. Four letter ones.

The next two days she thrashed my ass, first over 30 planned miles that turned into 22 on Thursday, and then over 50-70 that turned into 45 on Friday. After Friday’s long-turned-medium-ride I got home in a foul mood feeling discouraged and incapable. Luckily the next day was race day so I couldn’t self-centeredly dwell. And I wouldn’t have to ride.

Getting my cocky ass handed right back to me
xxx

Race Day

Instead Erica and I got to experience the pinnacle of our crazy sport. It was better than I had even imagined, from the 3:30am wake up to the 1:30am bedtime. (Thank you late night redbull, followed by late night bagels and white wine on the lanai!) I volunteered from 11am until almost 4pm at T2 handing athletes their bike bags, which offered an incredible opportunity to see all the pros come in off their bikes and later to legally assist all my friends racing. (Handing Josh his bike bag was a particular highlight of the whole day!)

Then race night Erica and I volunteered as finish line catchers from 8pm until 1am. We worked as a team intercepting athletes after they crossed the finish line, guiding them to get fluids in or the medical tent when necessary. I think I can speak for her and report that those were five of the most special hours of our tri-lives.

Ok maybe they were three of the most special hours. For the first hour or two it was a bit slow and monotonous and there seemed like there were more volunteers than were needed so we had long waits between catching athletes. But by 10pm there weren’t that many volunteers left and we were on constant call the final few hours of the race. We got to see the most incredible people like Roderick Sewell, the first double above-the-knee amputee to finish Kona. And we got to collect people as Kona champs Jan Frodeno and Anne Haug and other pros gave these finishers their leis.

When you catch any Ironman finisher, but especially the late night Kona finishers you become instant best friends. People you’ve just met hug you and cry on you and tell you how hard they fought to get there. We caught people who had fought for DECADES to qualify for this race. They moved me the most because I could see myself and my own journey so clearly in them.

When the final finisher ran in at 12:30 the finish line, which had already been an hours-long dance party, truly erupted. There were fire dancers, there were cheers and tears, there were pros and paratriathletes and Mike Reilly. A Native Hawaiian elder came out and sang a beautiful song and everyone held hands and smiled and cried and then hugged and then I got to tell Jan Frodeno how much his recovery from his own hip fracture had meant to me. Seeing him win after his own injury felt so meaningful and he was absolutely gracious and kind while I fangirled and gushed.

With 2019 World Champ Jan Frodeno! FRODOOOO!

The day after the race I got up early to get in one last dance with the Queen before I would have to hand Koopa over for his long trip back. After Friday I was humbled but I wanted to heal some of my bruised ego. Over 25 final miles she beat me up a bit more, but she also allowed me some final victories. After 150+ miles with the Queen that week I would definitely give the overall W to her, but I also had my moments. That final ride was a perfect farewell, hopefully just for now and not for forever.

Finding some smiles over the final Queen K miles.

But there are three sports in a triathlon, right?

Mixed in with all those literal and figurative peaks and valleys cycling, I also had a go at swimming and running Hawaii style. I logged lots of run miles on famed and beautiful Ali’I Drive – including the Underpants Run.

Underpants (or in our and many cases bikini) run!
Just me and Mike frickn Reilly in our skivvies!

I also joined Clarice for a few of her practice swims and I think it ruined all other open water for me. At first it was hard to focus on actually swimming, we were so mesmerized by the crystalline water and the tropical fish that made it feel like we were trespassing in an aquarium, or in someone’s screensaver. On our second swim I successfully followed Clarice’s feet for almost the whole mile and change workout. I’d never managed to stay on someone’s toes before and I’d never maintained pool paces in the open water.

Swim-pause at the coffee boat!

And I swear we got in some actual normal person in Hawaii vacationing though I could have done better by Scott on that front. I guess we’ll just have to come back.

See? We did vacation-y things!
Here’s us at a luau!
And horseback riding at sunset!

So where did Kona leave me?

I want to Kona-qualify more than ever; but I also feel less sure than ever that I’ll make it.

I conquered a lot of residual cycling fears; but I also realized how much work I still have to do to repair my bike confidence.

I’m more enamored of the tri world than ever; and less sure of my place in it.

My tan lines have tragically faded but I’m still riding that island wave. The energy of the biggest dance in our sport is wholly unique and special and I have no regrets about going through the financial and logistical trouble of going. I am glad I put in the hours, replete with their victories and disappointments. If nothing else it was one of the best vacations of my life – ten days spent in paradise with friends I adore getting to watch people achieve lifelong and hardfought dreams.

I am leaving 2019 in such a different place than I started it, in good and bad but mostly good ways. (For one thing, I can walk.) I had such big dreams when we decided to go to Kona, and I still have those dreams, but they’ve been tempered a bit by both time and the Queen and everything. I guess ultimately Kona didn’t give me exactly what I was looking for or what I thought it would, but maybe she gave me gifts I didn’t know I needed. Kona didn’t dash my dreams to bits in her lava fields, but she did hold a microscope up to them, and to me, and she forced me to grow up a little bit. The Queen K let me know how much I still have to learn and grow as a cyclist, but she also gave me hints that I’m capable of learning and growing. Kona and the Queen and Pele all said this shit’s not gonna come easy, and it might not come at all, but if it does, you’re gonna have to work your ass off, and it will be so worth it.

Will I ever earn my place here?

Race Report: Ironman Atlantic City 2019

I couldn’t have asked for better IMAC company than Tiff and Steve!

Preamble

After she crushed her first 70.3 at Ironman Virginia, Tiff wanted to do a second this season, and I wanted to do one where I didn’t have to DNF. She suggested Ironman Atlantic City in September which fit nicely as flat and fast tune up for Ironman Arizona in November and was driving distance for both of us. While having the time of our lives at Escape the Cape in June we let the whole #WayneAveCrew in on the plans and convinced Steve to return to the Jersey shore with us for IMAC.

Part of the pitch to Steve was that we wouldn’t have to shell out for lodging as one of Tiff’s friends had offered to put us up in her family home about a mile and a half from transition. We hoped Clarice (and maybe even Russ) would be able to join us but in the end between Kona training for her (and Worlds and European shenanigans for him) it attended up just being Steve, Tiff, and I. Oh, and a big group of fabulous Speed Sherpa teammates. (And of course Moira and Mike, our gracious AC-adjacent hosts for the weekend.)

Race Day Eve Eve

I got on the road Friday at 3:50 – absolutely vanquishing my first goal of the weekend which was to leave before 4pm as if that would somehow spare me DC traffic. It didn’t, but the drive wasn’t terrible and I managed to be the first one to the house, thanks in large part to some nonsense in the Holland Tunnel that waylaid all the New Yorkers.

I had no idea what to expect out of this house and honestly was a little suspicious it would be trashy and terrible, because what kind of people keep a vacation house in Atlantic City? Turns out it wasn’t a vacation house, nor was it right in AC, and it was incredible! The house is actually the house that Moira grew up in and her parents still live in, and is Ventnor, NJ. Ventnor is one town south of AC on the island and is a totally charming beach community with grand old houses overlooking the water and the boardwalk. Who knew?

It was dark when I arrived in the greater Atlantic City area and made my way to our weekend digs. As I drove Atlantic Avenue with thoughts of Community Chest and do-not-pass-Go in my head, the houses got bigger and grander. I checked the addresses in shock as I rolled through. When I reached the number Tiff had given me I parked, incredulous that this big house with the expansive porch was it. I had instructions to look for a lockbox on said porch, which I found, and punched in the code, which worked so I was getting surer that this was indeed the place.

I let myself into the dark cavernous house and found a light and silently took back all my prejudgments and thanked Tiff for setting us up like queens this weekend. I unloaded the car, taking extra precaution as I carried Koop inside not to scuff up the beautiful inlaid hardwood. Moira and Mike arrived shortly after me, and Tiff not too long after them. As if the home weren’t enough, Moira had ordered us dinner. I ran out and got a bottle of wine and we all ate, Tiff and I toasted, and tucked in early.

Tiff, Steve, and I at our weekend mansh

Race Day Eve

Unlike our beloved Wayne Ave – which would have fit five or six times into this house – we each had our own rooms for the weekend. Tiff and I were both excited to sleep until we woke up, a rare luxury. I slept great and woke up feeling more refreshed than I had in a long time. I got to wake to a view of the ocean and the boardwalk just a block away. I had one of those moments where the music and emotions swell; I felt incredibly lucky to be in this big house with friends, getting to race after 11 months of struggling.

View of the ocean and boardwalk from my room for the weekend

Tiff and I breakfasted on bagels and pop tarts. We discovered the house was actually right on the run course and Tiff took advantage of this by going out for a shakeout run on the boardwalk. I opted to skip the run, even though I had been assigned one. I had been struggling with my shin for months but in the week leading up to the race I was also experiencing some terrifying hip soreness and fatigue. I decided to save the run legs for race day. Instead I made use of the home gym (because of course there was a home gym) to do some of my PT exercises.

PT Time

When she got back from her run Tiff and I headed out to drive the bike course which we figured would be pretty quick as the 56 miles were split into 2.5 laps so we would only have to drive 25ish miles. We irked some locals trying to follow the pink arrows lighting the way, but it mostly worked until the course headed the wrong way up a highway offramp – not something we could do in a car when the highway wasn’t shut down so we abandoned the effort and returned home.

Steve was finally almost to AC from NYC so we grabbed our bikes for the mile and a half ride to pickup our packets and rack our steeds. After battling some dangerous drivers Tiff and I were almost to the race site in Bader Field when we were thwarted by a drawbridge and passing boats. By the time we made it across the bay Steve had arrived and we found our missing race roomie already online for pickup.

Bridge up on the way to packet pickup – look! There is a hill on the course now!

We got our packets and sat through an athlete briefing with race director extraordinaire, Stephen Del Monte. He is also the director for Escape the Cape and he puts on fantastic races. Tiff and I were both nervous after driving the course thinking about how we would only have one lane of the otherwise-active Atlantic City Expressway, but I trust Del Monte to take care of his athletes so my anxiety was assuaged knowing he was overseeing everything.

After the briefing we ran into Coach Dave. The timing turned out to be fortuitous as Tiff’s chain kept dropping while we wheeled over to transition. He figured the derailleur must have gotten a bit out of whack in the drive down from NYC. We exemplified teamwork as Dave, Steve, and I grabbed the bike and got it fixed: I held the handlebars and shifted through the gears as Steve manned the pedals and Dave adjusted the derailleur.

Once Tiff’s bike was working we racked and then Steve drove us back to our gorgeous weekend home – which he had not yet seen. Moira showed him to his room and we all cleaned up for dinner.

Koopa racked and ready to do some fast flat riding

Moira had very kindly made a reservation for all of us, including Dave and Speed Sherpette Dre, at an Italian spot a few blocks away called Red Room. It was perfect, with huge portions of pasta that I struggled through after filling up on arancini and bread. I had to bring lots of leftovers home and try to force as much down as I could before bed. (This is a recurring race-eve situation for me – I fill up too fast at dinner and have to bring food home and graze all evening.)

Steve and I posted up in Tiff’s huge room to race prep all together. We got all our bags together and tatted up, then settled in to watch an episode of SVU with the haul of Levain cookies Tiff had brought down from the city. I love that Tiff and I have this solid pre-race tradition and I love that Steve has totally embraced it. The cookies are carby goodness and Olivia Benson is a calming presence even while taking down bad guys – it’s the only way to get race ready.

We were in our separate beds on various floors of the grand house at 9pm. I took 15 extra minutes to sit in my Normatec boots before tucking in for good.

Race Morning

We were up at 3:30am, having heard warnings about how the traffic backs up to get into Bader Field. Transition opened at 4:30 and we had decided to hit the road shortly after 4am to buy ourselves plenty of time if the traffic snarled as badly as we’d heard. We did the race morning zombie dance of ignoring nerves and trying to eat whatever we could, getting on the road at 4:15.

The three of us loaded into my lil Yoshi as I was the only one with a bike rack so ironically the mini cooper actually offered the best chance of getting everyone’s bikes back home at the end of the day. Because we were coming from Ventnor and not Atlantic City proper we approached Bader Field from the north and not the south, and we discovered that there was indeed already a long line – just not in the direction from which we were coming!

Dozens of cars were waiting to turn right into the race, but we were one of two cars turning left in. Police were directing people into a single file line and I could see how this could take ages. But quickly it was our turn to swing left, and just as we did police opened a second lane of traffic and ushered us into that, meaning we waited in zero lines to get in. Instead we zoomed straight onto Bader Field and were parked by 4:25 – transition hadn’t even opened yet!

I’ve never arrived so early to a race. It was great to have so much time to set up, and to bathroom, and bathroom, and bathroom. I pumped my tires and got everything in order while choking down more calories and saying hello to other friends I ran into.

I also took some time to walk over to the Bay and watch the swim course. We’d been told the current would be against us going out and with us coming back, but watching the water it appeared to be the opposite.

A bit before 6 we all exited transition for the last time, bathroomed again, and headed to the swim start. We parted ways as Steve headed for a faster swim wave and Tiff and I lined up in the front of 36-45 minute group.

It was quite chilly with the sun just creeping up over the mid-September day. Rain was in the forecast and everyone held their breath wondering whether the skies would open during the swim. I hoped not feeling anxious about my swimming which hadn’t been going great in recent weeks. I feared rain would obscure the sighting and turn buoys and compound my aquatic misery.

The race was set to start at 6:30 but at 6:15 an unintelligible announcement came over the loudspeaker. We all looked around uncomprehendingly until word made it back to our slow wave that the swim was on a 30 minute delay because of lightning.

Just as this message was conveyed to our back of the swim pack the rain started. Just a drizzle at first but it steadily picked up. Tiff and I found space on some grass and sat down, huddling close. I was freezing, and tried to fold my arms into my sleeveless wetsuit for some modicum of warmth. Tiff and I laughed at how miserable it was to sit in the rain at dawn on a Sunday and how if our friends could see us they would think we were totally out of our minds.

I started wondering if maybe the swim would be canceled and I can’t say I hated the idea. No sooner had I kinda wished for a duathlon than we were given word that the swim was a go and we should line back up. We got up to queue for the new 7am start, but the self-seeding had fallen apart during the intervening shower. I didn’t see a 36-45 minute sign anymore and everyone just crowded toward the water. Tiff and I filed in and soon we were hugging one final time and heading down the dock to start our days for real.

Swim

My very first swim thought – really my very first thought of the race – was, I don’t want to do Ironman Arizona. That was the first thing that entered my mind when I hit the water. The 1.2 mile distance felt terrible and untenable as soon as I was horizontal. I hated it immediately and my brain started in right away telling me I couldn’t do it and I should quit now.

I’m pretty used to these negative swim thoughts, I battle them to some degree in every race. But man were they loud that morning over those first few hundred meters. I kept putting one arm in front of the other, trusting that my mental state would improve. Eventually the internal screaming monologue subsided to an ignorable buzzing.

It was hard to find my rhythm though because the whole first half of the course was violent! People did not seed themselves correctly. Every two minutes or so had to fight through another throng of slower swimmers. (Almost all greencapped men.) Every time I started feeling like I was finally getting down to business I had to chart a course through another group of three or four thrashing guys. I blamed tri-hubris but also the breakdown of any sort of organized seeded start after the rain delay.

At least the course was well marked with sighting buoys. Unlike Cleveland, and apart from the intermittent melees, I was able to find my way easily. A little before halfway I arrived at the two turning buoys and then things really got physical. People were thrashing around and swimming wide competing for space to make the turn back toward home. It was slow and unpleasant going to find a way through the mosh pit. I guess I blame the lack of accurate time-seeding for the chaos? Whatever the reason I wasn’t a fan of the turnaround.

When I finally got through it and was horizontal again pointed back toward transition I expected some sort of current. Instead there was just chop. I never noticed a current one way or the other in the swim. It’s very possible that I’m just not particularly attuned to such things in the water and maybe we did get an assist at some point. I did notice some swells on the back half of the course – and by notice I mostly mean I did swallow a good bit of Bay on the back half. But it was nothing compared to Cleveland so I wasn’t too bothered by it.

In fact I was feeling so comfortable that I started pushing myself to swim a little harder. I just about never do that. I always just find a very comfortable pace and dawdle-crawl (crawdle?), unchallenged, through the water. But I was feeling secure in the conditions so I started to alternate easy and then push paces between sight buoys. It felt like a mental and physical open water breakthrough, and one that I’m hoping to replicate going forward. It helped that the crowds were thinner now too.

I was feeling proud of myself and chugging along buoy to buoy when I came upon a woman going much slower than me, but positioned just so between myself and the next buoy that I had to hustle to beat her there or else I would get stuck behind her for a while. I had plenty of room to make the pass though so I picked up the pace and stayed to her right, with the buoy coming up on both our rights. As I made my move I could see that I was good on space and was in no danger of cutting her off or getting stuck behind the buoy. Just as I thought to this myself and just as I was passing her on the right I turned to breathe to my left and saw her reach up, very intentionally, with her right arm and grab my left shoulder. She then shoved me hard in the water. It was wild. The shittiest swim behavior I’ve ever encountered. I got a good look at her red trikit under her sleeveless wetsuit and took a mental snapshot. I freed myself from her grasp and swam fast as I could on, kicking a few extra well placed splashes as I did. What. A. Beeeetch. (Her; not me. I’m great.)

A pretty decent swim in the end! (ps do you like my bay beard?)

The rest of the swim passed uneventfully. I got over being accosted and resumed my new routine of actually trying, My final official swim time was 38:15 which was (barely but still counts) slightly under 2:00/100m – the bar at which I continue to set my over/under swim-barrassment.

I later learned that other athletes apparently saw lots of jellyfish throughout the swim. I never did and very I’m glad as they really freak me out. Steve saw them but said they were not the stinging kind. I was never a lifeguard like Steve though so that’s not something I would have known.

Swim exit running towards some strippers!

T1

I ran up the boatramp and was greeted by two of the fastest wetsuit strippers ever. They had me out of my neoprene and on my way in no time. It was a pretty lengthy jog into transition and to my rack in particular. I tried to be efficient but I wouldn’t say I was “racing” through my transitions that day. They weren’t too bad compared to others but they could have been tighter if I’d been in a more competitive mindframe. T1 timed out to 6:59 which isn’t stellar but not as slow as it sounds given the size of the transition.

Bike

It was a flat course – a 70.3 first for me – and I’d been cycling a lot while unable to run much so my goals for the day were all bike-oriented. Even after an unassertive T1 I felt like my head was in it from the second I hit the saddle. It had rained lightly through the whole swim and it was starting to pick up as I rode out to the Atlantic City Expressway (ACE). I was so happy to have had the experience of “racing” in the rain at IMVA in May. (Though I’m wondering if Tiff brings the wet race weather…) I didn’t feel intimidated by the precipitation, even as it quickly increased from drizzle to deluge.

Awkward let’s-do-this wave on the way to the real meat of the bike course

The active freeway also turned out to be less intimidating than I’d feared. There was a wide shoulder and then we had an entire additional lane, and a line of cones marked the division between the “closed’ bike course and the highway. It definitely wasn’t lonely but it wasn’t too crowded either. I spent the entire bike passing people so was constantly gurgling “on your left!” into the downpour. In that way I didn’t feel like I ever got much of a chance to just hunker down and pedal, but it wasn’t so populous that I ever worried about accidentally drafting either.

A few miles into the first of three (2.5?) laps the rain became absurdly heavy – like nothing I’d ever biked in before. At one point it was monsooning so hard that I just had to laugh. These race conditions were ridiculous but here we all were. As I passed by people they laughed too and we shrugged at this very strange thing we’d signed up to do.

In the downpour I managed to stay low and pretty fast, though Coach Dave later said the conditions made for slower cycling. I was relieved to also find that I wasn’t cold. I’d been freezing during the soggy swim delay and here I was moving at 20 mph in much soggier weather and I felt ok. A shiver here and there but I mostly didn’t notice anything, except my wet little toes did go a bit numb. I could feel my fingers and shift and for that I was thankful. I did decide last minute in T1 to put on bike gloves which was helpful for both warmth and grip.

Smiling through the lap 1 monsoon

Eight miles in the course exits the ACE for a seven mile loop through a town I think was called Pleasantville. I don’t know about the town itself but the quality of the pavement was not so pleasant. Of course the first time through it was also mostly under water which didn’t help the rough riding.

At one point early on into that first waterlogged lap I hit a deep crevice, whose watery depths were masked by the puddle and the lack of visibility. I stayed upright but was seriously jostled and hit it hard enough that I spent the next few miles in a panic that I might have a flat or even frame damage from the impact.

I was nervous that I’d flatted for most of that trip through Pleasantville as I had slowed way down compared to the ACE. I wasn’t sure if it was the terrain, the more crowded path, the rain, or a mechanical issue. It ended up being from the first three things, I can’t blame the bike for the slow down as I replicated that deceleration the second and third times I exited the freeway too.

Each time too the first few miles through Pleasantville got a little crowded. There were a number of sharp turns in quick succession and some narrower roads so the way was thicker with other athletes. The first lap seemed the most crowded, maybe because I’d gone out in a later swim wave, and maybe because the weather was worst then. I weaved through the throng but plenty of fast guys were passing me. And one of those guys was Coach Dave! I don’t think he heard me as I cheered him on but damn did he look fast. And no wonder, he won the whole dang Aquabike.

The single aid station was located halfway through the Pleasantville lap, meaning we hit it at miles 10, 30 and 50. The first time through I still had the gu and stroopwaffle I’d brought and not being too many miles in yet I wasn’t feeling anywhere near hungry. I don’t know why I didn’t just grab an extra gu to carry in case but I was feeling strong and so I stayed left and rode past all those waiting calories.

I was happy to get back to the ACE around mile 15. I took some time to eat gu I was carrying, promising myself I’d grab another the next swing through. Then I got down to business. The rain was starting to lighten and I had work to do on my sub-3 hour bike goal. Given the weather and the multiple lap opportunities I had made myself a deal when I got on the bike that I could use the first lap to assess the course a bit but that I had to hammer the second lap. Now on the back half of the first lap I wanted to drop the hammer early. The ACE was heavenly compared with Pleasantville and I knew that I was going to have to use that sweet smooth freeway pavement to grab speed each time through. So I stayed low, enjoyed the hell out of picking off riders – especially the dudes – and finished lap one strong just under a 20mph average.

Did I mention we rode through toll booths on the ACE too?

My stated goal was to finally turn in a half iron bike under three hours. I’ve been within a few seconds and I’d never done a flat 70.3 so I felt like I had no excuse. My unspoken goal was to average over 20mph. I was on track to go sub-three but I needed to go hard on the second and third laps to get that average speed up. Luckily the rain had slackened to a spit and I now knew what the whole bike course looked like.

Again I hammered the ACE, keeping my speed up closer to 22mph until exited back into Pleasantville. Here again my speed slowed, and on lap two I was much more careful to dodge the road’s myriad imperfections. With the rain abating I could now really see how deep some of the craters were and wondered which bastard hole had nearly taken me out in the previous lap.

Approaching the second (same) aid station at mile 30 I had eaten my gu and half of my stroopwaffel, and I knew I needed to get more calories. I called for and was handed a gu (thank you volunteers!) as I rolled through, and here is where I was thwarted by an embarrassing childhood failure:

I had braces for a good many years to fix some ugly chompers, but I didn’t wear my bottom retainer as religiously as I should have so everything shifted and basically my teeth don’t touch except for my very back molars on each side. I make sure to pre-open most of the nutrition I carry on my bike because of this. It gets a little sticky with gus sometimes, but it’s really hard for me to open them or anything with my crooked bite. So I grabbed a gu from a lovely volunteer and then I gnawed and gnawed at it and absolutely could not open the damn thing. And then, not thinking, I tossed the unopened, unconsumed nutrition in the last aid station trash can not wanting to get a littering penalty. I was not thinking clearly. I obviously should have just kept it and tried again in a few minutes, even if I had to pull over I should have kept the calories. Now I had twenty miles until my next fueling opportunity. (I also should have grabbed extra gels and waffles, it’s not like I didn’t have plenty in my transition bag.)

As I got back to the highway around mile 35 I was starting to feel a little hungry, and when you’re starting to feel it you’re already in trouble. I ate my remaining stroopwaffle, washed it down with some gatorade and a prayer. Then I shook it off and got down to work. I had Pleasantville’s slower miles to make up for, plus I figured the faster I rode the faster I’d be back at that aid station.

Aside from the grumbly tummy I still felt really good. I finished lap two with my overall average right at 20mph. I just had to maintain it over lap three. The rain had now completely stopped and the sun was peaking out as I started the final loop. I became a little concerned that I should have grabbed sunglasses. I’d left them behind as they become blurry messes in the rain but now I was squinting and could feel the day rapidly warming.

I wanted that over-20 average so I burned a few matches heading up the ACE on this final lap. Most of the really fast people were off the course so I was flying by just about everyone. Pleasantville slowed me down again, though I powered through stronger than my first two goes. When I got back to the aid station I made the decision to pull over for a second, refill my aero bottle with gatorade, and grab a gu. When I got back on I decided to also grab half a banana which was clutch. I continue to struggle with my stomach which just wants real foods even while racing, so the fruit always hits the spot. I gulped down the banana and then was able to bite open the gu and get some of that in, keeping the open sticky packet on me for more calories further down the road.

With a happier belly I rode back to the ACE for the final few miles and the final go at the freeway. I was able to keep the average over 22mph on the way home and when I pulled off the highway toward transition I knew I had both bike goals in the bag if I could just maintain for a few more minutes.

And then the trip back into transition took so long. I remembered Stephen Del Monte saying something in the athlete briefing about where the bike course sensors were but I couldn’t remember exactly what he’d said and so I wasn’t sure if I had finished the bike yet as I continued to spin through Bader Field toward our racks. My Garmin says I did 57.5 miles on the bike in 2:51, and I was feeling slightly discouraged about those numbers when I finally reached the dismount line. Later my official results accounting for the actual bike course start and stop clocked me at 2:45:58 for those 56 miles, with an average speed of 20.25mph. That’s more like it!

Confusingly long trip either or to your through transition two

T2

I wasn’t loving my Garmin numbers but I had nailed that sub-three hour bike no matter what and I’d averted a caloric catastrophe so I was feeling pretty stellar as I ran toward my rack. I grabbed another gu, my visor, glasses, salt pills, pretzels, and number and headed out. Somehow T2 took 7:05 but I chalk that up to having no idea where the timing mats really were. And also to my indecisiveness about whether to bring my big ziplock of pretzels.

Run

The beggining of the run mirrored the end of the bike in that it was a confusing, meandering slog through Bader Field and I was pretty sure but not totally sure that the run clock had actually started. I had to hit a porta within that first arduous half-mile which added about 90 seconds to my first run split too. I was disappointed in myself for needing the bathroom pause but my happiness with my bike overshadowed it.

As we were finally exiting the Bader Field transition area I saw Dave and Dre wheeling their bikes away after both crushing the Aquabike competition. I shouted to them and crested that wave of warm and fuzzy adrenaline you get when you see your teammies during a race.

It was just the boost I needed as my Garmin buzzed my first run mile with time of 9:42. That included the bathroom detour so I wasn’t too worried about the slow pace. What I was worried about was the fact that we didn’t hit the course’s mile one marker until a couple minutes – close to a third of a mile – past where my watch had buzzed. With the confusing jaunt through Bader Field’s parking lot I figured I’d somehow missed the timing mats and hit go on my watch too early. This felt deflating as I feared I’d be off on the mile markers the whole run.

We turned onto the boardwalk that accounted for most of the run course halfway through what my watch swore was the second mile. As feared, the official marker for mile number two didn’t appear until .3 miles after my Garmin had buzzed it. In addition to being off the whole run I was also nervous that this meant I’d be running an extra long “half marathon” which was not ideal on my still-recovering legs.

I had been struggling to increase mileage since coming off the crutches and had zero idea of what to expect going into this race. My “long runs” since learning how to walk again in March and running my first mile mid-April comprised of: a handfull of five milers, three 10k runs including the disaster that was Nationals, 7 miles once, 8.5 miles once, and 9 miles the Sunday before the race, during which I’d had to stop twice. So 13.1 miles after the swim and bike was just slightly daunting. My hip had also been squawking a bit after (aaand a bit during) that 9 miler so I had a lot of anxiety about whether my body would hold up in AC.

The good news was that this boardwalk was spongy awesomeness. It had a lot more give than the road and it was a joy to run on. I tried to focus on gratitude for the soft surface, for the ocean next to us, and for the fact that I was getting to even try this run. The sun was peeking out and the day was warming up so I just reminded myself to take it kind of easy and enjoy a great course and what health I had. Run traffic headed in both directions so I got to see Steve around my mile two and his mile seven which was another mental boost.

Since I knew I didn’t have my usual run fitness to fall back on I ran the whole thing off heartrate, only looking at pace whenever my watch (prematurely) buzzed another mile down. For the first half of the race I stayed really conservative keeping my BPM in 150s. It felt pretty easy and I had to remind myself every few minutes to stay lowkey. I knew I was lacking the aerobic base for my running so if I overheated I was done for. I felt like it was better to stay way under threshold and finish a little slower than to blow up.

During the third mile the course left the boardwalk for a block down Atlantic Avenue, and right past our home for the weekend. I looked to the big porch as I passed, hoping to see Moira and Mike, but they weren’t there. I was a little bummed but I also thought I’d probably gotten there sooner than they expected, which was a great thought. This also reminded me that I might get to see Tiff soon, with the turaround coming up.

Indeed at the beginning of my Garmin-appointed fifth mile, after another few blocks on Atlantic, we were routed back onto the boardwalk to head back toward AC (im)proper. Within a few minutes I was again in two-way traffic and keeping an eye out for Tiff.

I saw her when I was somewhere in my sixth mile and she in her third or fourth. It was another morale boost as was the fact that I was getting close to the halfway point of the race, though the mile markers were still completely at odds with my Garmin so I wasn’t a hundred percent sure where halfway was.

I had kept miles 2-6 in the 8:40s and my heartrate in those easy peasy 150s. Entering mile seven though I could feel the unfamiliar accumulation of miles starting to wear on me, at the same time the sun really began to flex its muscle. I had been toying with letting my heartrate creep up at the halfway point, but the fatigue and the heat decided for me. I soon found my BPM in the low, and then the mid-160s, even as my pace began to fade into the low 9s. I wasn’t loving this turn of events but I didn’t have any say in the matter, and I had too many miles to go to fight to keep my miles sub-9.

Mile seven clocked a 9:02. I was able to pull mile eight back to just barely sub-nine with an 8:58, but mile nine shot way up with a 9:25 thanks to a walk through an aid station to take some BASE salt. I was carrying some nutrition but I also literally follow my gut on race day, and that day my gut wanted some interesting things. The tube of BASE salt was great, and at one point I even had some Redbull which I almost never want. I honored my belly’s wishes though and after my near nutritional disaster on the bike I felt pretty good in that department the whole run.

Mile nine also included some beach running, a cruel run past the finish line, and then a run away from the main boardwalk and around a large shaded pier that according to the map is apparently part of Caesars. I saw Steve again on the pier, and my friend Courtney who was doing some final pre-Kona tune-ups with this race. Seeing those friendly faces couldn’t have come at a better time as I was definitely feeling worn down by the miles and the sun now.

Short beach run passing the finish line (but not yet finishing) in mile 9

Plus I was feeling demoralized as the mile markers had gotten even farther off my Garmin tracking. I was now hitting official mile marker signs more than .4 miles after my watch buzzed. And I wasn’t the only one – I could hear other athletes’ watches buzzing around the same time mine did every mile. If I’d blown it with the run-out timing mats I was in good company.

We were also in the company of all the Atlantic City revelers. The run course is roped off from the rest of the active AC boardwalk which is populated by the usual AC suspects – many of whom look truly shocked to wander out of their casinos or bars to discover so many people out exercising. We had some entertaining cheerleaders in those folks though. I could have done without all the smoking but I appreciated the inebriated cheers from confused but encouraging onlookers.

I did not appreciate the strange advertising TV screens that line the boardwalk and played that god awful We buy any car dot com commercial every three minutes. They did become a source of course camaraderie as I heard people commiserate or even sing along in jest.

Miles 10 through 12 all clocked in the low 9s and between my slowing legs and the lengthening mile markers I was afraid I wouldn’t even do the half marathon in under two hours, and I began preparing for that blow to my ego. The thought made me just want to slow down more and give in to disappointment. I had already accepted before the race that it wouldn’t be a PR and then reaccepted that fact a few miles prior, even though I’d had such a big bike PR.

Halfway through mile 11 we got to turn around once more and head back toward the finish line for real this time. I was hurting, but at least I was pointed toward home now. Then something miraculous happened. My Garmin buzzed right as I ran past the official marker – somehow after ten miles of increasing disharmony, the stars and miles were re-alighning.

This information changed everything. It meant we weren’t running a 13.6 mile half marathon, which changed whether or not I could go sub-2 on the run. I didn’t realize it right away but it also changed whether or not I could PR. I was physically feeling every ray of sun, and the total deficit of run endurance, but my mood completely flipped. I also ran by Tiff around this time. She was clearly also in the pain cave but she was just a few miles from the end and I knew she’d make it.

I stayed the course for mile 12, again coming in low 9s, as I worked out the numbers in my head and tried to save a bit for mile 13, knowing I didn’t have much left to give. In running the numbers as I entered that final full mile of the day it suddenly dawned on me that if I pushed I could actually PR this thing. It hurt like hell but I dug down deep and found some low 8s as I ran back around that pier and towards the finish.

All the finish line feels
Finish chute cry face!

My Garmin and the mile markers were still in sync as my watch face lit up an 8:11 for mile 13. I was now turning the corner off the pier and could see the finish line. I felt like I might puke if I picked up too much speed so I just dipped a bit below 8 into the 7:50s and held on, willing that Redbull to stay down. I had started to feel really emotional in mile 13 and now I was trying not to cry because I could feel my diaphragm on the verge of contracting the contents of my stomach up and out. I breathed and I ran and I crossed the finish line with an official run time of 1:57:51 and overall race time of 5:36:06 – a 2 minute PR!

don’tpukedon’tpuke
No puke! Success!

Now I let the happy tears roll. What a year it had been. So many disappointments, so much hard work to learn to walk and then run again. And here I was with a PR on the bike and overall – and I’d done it without falling back on my run. And the run hadn’t hurt! I mean the hip hadn’t anyway. I was completely overjoyed as I accepted my medal, posed for a pic, and sipped water to calm my ecstatic stomach.

Pure stinky sweaty cry-y joy. Also deliberately not looking at my watch bc finish line photos!
Looking a lil crazed from the happy tears

Aftermath

I picked up the bag I’d checked that morning (did I mention we checked bags? We did, because the finish is a mile and a half from the start.) and found a dozens of messages from Speed Sherpa and Rev3 teammates and other tri friends. Obviously the waterworks continued.

I pulled up the Ironman Tracker app to confirm that I had indeed PRed and saw that I was 14th in the 35-39 age group. I was stunned and over the moon. I had wanted to go top ten in an Iron distance race this year, (ideally a full but a half will do,) but I had let all those types of goals go a long time ago. So to come so close to that top ten goal, and to do so without the benefit of my run felt incredible and totally shocking.

I texted Coach Dave who was down the Boardwalk a few blocks having a beer to celebrate his overall Aquabike win. I grabbed some athlete food and found Steve and we joined Dave, Dre, and teammate Marco as we waited for Tiff to finish.

Steve and I each ordered a beer, which came in giant steins, and then realized we had no money. Dave was about to head out as his wife, Queen Sherpette Sara, had given birth to their second baby literally the Tuesday prior. (She insisted Dave do the race!) Before he left we asked the champion and proud papa if he would pay for our brewskies. Thank goodness Steve realized we were penniless before we were also Dave-less!

Beers with (and courtesy of) Coach Dave before he returned to new dad detail!

Once Tiff finished we loaded up on the school bus shuttle back to Bader Field. When we’d decided to all ride to the race in my Mini Cooper, Yoshi, we had figured we would try to get all three bikes on the bike rack but if not, someone could ride home because it wasn’t very far. Once we had collected our bikes and got back to that lil green dinosaur, no one wanted to have anything to do with more cycling. We bike-tetrised like our legs depended on it and somehow arranged all three whips on the rack. As we pulled back onto the road for the short haul back to Moira’s house people laughed (I’d like to think admiringly) at this tiny car pulling its weight in bicycles.

Have you ever seen a Mini tow three bikes? Well ya have now!

We all – bikes included – made it safely to our mansion by the shore. It was sad to have to part ways, but I wanted to make it home at a decent hour so I forewent a full shower and just rinsed a bit and changed. We divvied up the remaining bagels and Levain cookies, I wolfed down the previous evening’s leftover pasta, and then got back into Yoshi, this time with just the one bike, and returned victoriously to DC.

I don’t think I could possibly be prouder of this race. I didn’t have my whole healthy self, but I gave everything I safely could. That 2:45 bike was a big deal for me, as was continuing to conquer rainy riding conditions. I also discovered that I was 21st out of 100 out of the water and that might actually be the day’s biggest victory. (Could it be that actually trying in the swim yields results??) I’ll never be the fastest swimmer, but I do plan to get my run fitness back and when I do I can work with 21st place in the swim – that’s a more reasonable number of people to have to bike and run down than my usual 50 or more.

As for the race itself I highly recommend it. Stephen Del Monte will take care of you, the boardwalk is heaven to run on, and I gotta say, I don’t hate a flat bike course! I won’t be back next year but I will be back. (And hopefully Moira will have us again because I am not staying in Atlantic City itself!)

All smiles walking away from IMAC

Race Report: Quantico Tri 2019

Spoiler alert? Whatever.

Backstory

The last time I did this race in 2017 I signed off my race report saying I didn’t love the race but could probably be peer pressured into doing it again. Well I’m here to tell you after a second peer-pressured go at this event: Nope. Never again. Not even if my whole team is doing it. No way.

I really hate to be negative but describing it honestly, it’s just not a great race. The people are so nice, I appreciate the Marines being out on the course and welcoming us onto the base, everyone I interacted with was responsive and friendly; but the course is a mess and the logistics make no sense. It’s run by the Marine Corps Marathon organization and I think the issues all derive from the same fact: it’s a triathlon put on by marathon people. Triathlon is a very different animal than a simple run race and it calls for experienced tri-people to make it work. So I’ll amend my previous griping and say that while peer pressure won’t get me to this start line again, I would consider it if it were taken over by seasoned tri professionals. (Hey Rev3! Whaddaya say???)

A group of Speed Sherpa teammates had been talking about doing Quantico again all summer so it had been on my radar but with the season I’ve had (or haven’t had) I wasn’t making any not-last minute decisions about it. One of the teammates pushing it was none other than Chris Owens ( or Owensies as my phone autocorrects to) of Ironman Chattanooga fame. He isn’t doing much triathlon-ing these days. His October wedding is apparently some sort of priority for him. Go figure. This was his was one and only swimbikerun of the year and it’s also Peyton’s perennial birthday race – those were really my only reasons for even considering it.

There were two weeks between USAT Nationals and Quantico, and over that intervening weekend I decided I wanted to hang with Owensies and Peyton so I asked Josh if I could do it. His response was just, ‘why?’ I explained the FOMO and promised to get extra biking done that weekend so he said ok, but I wouldn’t say he was fully onboard with the idea of a random sprint a few weeks before Ironman Atlantic City 70.3.

So I registered on Sunday for a Saturday race. I did so with Peyton’s assurance that she had asked and organizers had told her yes you can do onsite race-day packet pickup. Then on Thursday we received an email that said no you can’t and we all had little panics.

Packet pickup per the email and athlete guide was to be done during working hours on Quantico Marine Corps Base. And here is my first major issue with this race logistically. Getting to Quantico during the week is basically impossible. It is over 30 miles away from DC and probably by design it isn’t near anything. There was absolutely zero chance I could get there from work on a Thursday or Friday by the time they closed shop at 7pm. I’d venture the only people who could make it to packet pickup were people who already lived on base or don’t work which makes me wonder who the target audience of this race is. Is it supposed to just be for military men, women, and spouses? (Then again the Marine Corps Marathon packet pickup was switched a few years ago from DC to the not-convenient-for-anyone National Harbor so maybe this logistical headache is right on brand.)

Fortunately Owensies, Peyton, and I each emailed organizers and each heard back that we could do same day pickup. They were very nice about it but they should just set up a packet pickup somewhere in DC or Arlington and with later hours that people can actually get to. Or do it through Pacers and Potomac River Running like they do for the Marathon. (See the move to National Harbor has been a bane to athletes but a boon to DC run stores that worked out a deal to pick up people’s packets in exchange for buying branded merch.) I was already a little grumpy about the whole race by the time Saturday rolled around. (Being a Saturday race is about the only thing Quantico has in the pro column.)

Race Morning

Scott was kind enough to come with me and oh boy just read on to see how insanely kind he is. Organizers had asked that we get there early to do day-of pickup and Quantico is an hour away without traffic so we got up at 3:45 to be on the road between 4:15 and 4:30. The drive down was easy as it can be and around 5:15 we were pulling onto the base. Fortunately by chance we both had our IDs handy so security check was easy. My very rude giant hound dogs embarrassed me though when one of the Marines waving us through was excited to see them and they woofed at him.

The base is large and there wasn’t great [read: any] signage to get to the transition and parking. We followed Waze and cars with bikes in front of us but didn’t really know if we were on track. After a few minutes we found ourselves in apparently the rightish place and we were waved into a lot by some more marines. They said something about it being the lot for cars with bike racks. It was not the lot right next to transition where we’d parked in 2017 and we weren’t given any other instructions on getting to the race start. I was antsy about doing packet pickup so I quickly grabbed my bike and my bag and headed toward where I could only assume transition was located.

Some fellow athletes kindly pointed the way as I pushed Koop out of the parking lot. It was a five minute walk to transition. Five minutes isn’t long but it was pitch black out and I had to walk my bike on an active road with no shoulder. I thought the whole way of how perfectly terrible it would be to be struck by a driver on my way to the race because of this disorganization. So began the day’s bike-car road-sharing troubles.

Once I found the info tent, which was a bit of a challenge, packet pickup was quick and easy and everyone was very friendly. (The 3:45 wakeup was totally unnecessary but it’s preferable to missing pickup or rushing.) There were some empty portas right next to the tent so I made use of those and then happened upon Peyton shortly thereafter. We headed over to transition where we were racked very close together because darling Peyton, one of the main and only reasons I was doing this race, had signed up the same day as me. Yes that’s right, the Sunday before, because when I texted her and Owensies about the race she remembered she should probably actually register.

We were on a short awkward rack of bikes near the bike out exit which was mostly convenient. I feel for organizers in their unenviable task of finding a way to place transition on base next to the river but this transition area is absurd. It’s totally lopsided, on a hill, racks are not in an even grid, and during the race it gets confusing to navigate.

I also feel for all the newbs who use this as their first triathlon, trying to figure out how to arrange their things under such a confounding array of of zigzagging racks. The person I don’t feel for is whoever is telling these new triathletes to bring buckets for their transition area. It’s gotta stop. Is there a slowtwitch board about this somewhere?? It was a total trend in Quantico, people hauling all their gear into transition in giant 10 gallon buckets which they they place obtrusively next to their towels and apparently sit on when putting on or changing shoes. Can we get the word out to the Beginner Triathlete newsletter or something to put a stop to this?

Sorry, that was a real get-off-my-transition-lawn moment. This race brings out the multisport-curmudgeon in me! Moving on.

Owensies arrived while we were setting up and I couldn’t stay a grouch with him and Peyton for early morning company. We got set up and race-tatted up (and then I remembered I was wearing a kit with sleeves so I had to get permanent markered on my forearms too like a dummy) and we all porta’ed.

Porta potty pals! (Also I blame these two people for making me do this stupid race again!)

We all headed down to the swim start a little before 7am. For some reason Owensies was in the first swim wave at 7:05 and Peyton and I were in the penultimate wave at 7:20 and she was pissed about this. And it was hilarious. She fumed and grumbled that organizers had made some sort of mistake with her entry. We had all had to predict our swim times when registering and Chris and I had both put somewhere in the 13-14 minute range for the 750 meter swim while speedster Peyton had predicted sub-10. I thought she was giving organizers too much credit assuming they had assigned our waves based on these predictions because none of the wave assignments made sense and they’d been nonsensical back in 2017 too.

As Chris headed off to join his early wave Peyton and I decided to make the most of our inexplicable late start to use the portas one more time. This may or may not have been wise because while in there somehow Peyton got what she believed to be (someone else’s) poop on her knee. This of course led to a second (also hilarious) freak out (I’m sorry to mock your pain, P!) on top of the swim wave ire.

Peyton fuming about poop and swim waves

We made it back to Scott and the dogs at the swim start around 7:10 where we stripped and handed him our sweatshirts, phones, and shoes. The river (I think this swim is technically in part of the Potomac?) temp was not wetsuit legal but the air temp was only in the 60s so we were chilly after we disrobed.

Such good race hounds! (And hubs!)

When it was almost go-time Peyton got a call from her husband, Brian, who was driving to Quantico with two of their sons, and whose car had broken down on base about a mile from the race. With less than five minutes till our wave went off Peyton was having a third (less hilarious [though in the aggregate still funny]) freak out. Scott calmed her, took Brian’s number down, and told us to go get in the water and he would handle it, which he did.

I tell you all of this because a) it’s pretty funny to watch P have meltdown after meltdown before 8 am on her birthday and b) because you should all know what a badass she is for starting the race in that sort of headspace and then killing it. More on how she killed it further down but you have to get through the rest of my griping first.

Swim (Or, more accurately, Walk)

Leaving Brian’s crisis in Scott’s capable (though already-full) hands Peyton and I joined our wave at the swim entrance ramp. In 2017 the water had been shallow enough to stand most of the way around which I imagine is comforting to new triathletes getting used to open water swimming. This year the tide was out though so the water line was even lower turning that comforting swim into basically just a walk.

As we squeezed ourselves to the front of our inexplicably late wave we could see the waves ahead of us on the course and what we saw was a couple hundred athletes trudging upright through the thigh-high water. We were both incredulous remembering how nasty the bottom of the river was and my uncharitable feelings toward the Quantico Triathlon deepened. (Unlike the river. Which remained shallow. And stupid.)

The swim start. And also, the swim middle and end.

Just before go-time our wave was ushered down the ramp into the river for an in-water start. As the group took our starting positions, in water no higher than even my hips, we just all laughed at the absurdity of what was about to go down. We could see people walking the whole way around the out and back rectangular course so apparently this was gonna be 750 meters of not-really-a-swim.

Peyton has at least a foot on me so I though the situation was probably worse for her. I thought for sure I’d have a tiny person t-rex arm advantage and be able to swim where others would be forced to walk. The bottom was as squishily unpleasant as I’d remembered so I planned to at least try to swim the whole thing.

The gun went off and everyone around me started marching forward. I had taken an unusually aggressive swim position near the front of the crowd and I leapt ahead into the water and started to swim but quickly I was overtaken by people walking and closing in around me. I swam into ass after ass, and had to shorten my stroke to keep from grabbing the muck at the river bottom on every pull. After less than a minute I gave in and stood to join the upright throng.

This is how gnarly my sports bra looked after the race thanks to the “swim.”

I tried dolphin jumping a few times but there were too many walkers and every time I was forced back onto my feet. It was tiring trudging through the muddy river floor but it seemed like the only real option and the path of least resistance. I mostly walked to the first buoy 250 meters out. I tried swimming the 50 meters to the next turn and it worked a little as the bottom dropped away a bit.

Three hundred meters in we turned and headed back toward the swim exit and transition. It was a bit deeper for most of this 300 meter stretch and I got a little bit of swimming done. It was actually deep enough in places that I couldn’t really stand, but for most people it was still shallow enough to walk and so that’s what most people were doing. I continued to collide with backs and backsides as I tried to perform the swimming part of swimbikerun.

As we made the final turn back to transition the water got shallower again and it became harder to keep up this swim charade, but I tried the whole way in. At one point after that last turn I experienced a triathlon first when a man swam not over but under me. I don’t quit get the physics of it but this gentleman was apparently riding quite low in the water while he too tried to actually swim the swim, and as he cut across me he swam under my torso and I caught a momentary ride in. (Is that cheating???)

Swim exit just as stupid as swim start and middle.

My GPS has the course a little short, just under 700 meters rather than 750. Maybe all the walking made it easier to “swim” the tangents but in my cynicism toward this race I suspect organizer error, or apathy. Either way my swim-walk time per my Garmin was 12:34 and per official race results was 12:46. If I’d actually swum it I’d call this an open water sprint PR but given the circumstances you can’t really call it anything but a mess.

T1

It was a struggle to find my bike among the non-uniform rows of racks but I eventually located Koop. I had to navigate the obstacle course of buckets to get to my shoes and to pull my whip safely down. I think I dawdled a bit in my grumpiness but I would estimate around 3 minutes for T1. I can’t tell you for sure though because our official results don’t include transition times and my Garmin didn’t record correctly. This is another one of those places where it would be helpful to have tri people organize the tri. Transition times may not seem important to people who don’t race triathlon but they’re critical to understanding your race and how you stack up against your competition.

Bike

I felt anxious about this bike course remembering all the vehicle traffic in 2017 and the condition of the roads. I won’t pretend that I looked at the course this year to see if it was the same as two years ago (it was not) but the first few miles were the same so my anxiety went unchecked.

From transition there was about a mile straight shot of rough road that traversed an overpass before hitting the car-plagued main course. I found it hard to pick up much speed due to some degree to the ravaged blacktop but more because my legs were burning up with lactic acid. This race was by no means any sort of goal so I was coming into it unrested – in fact I’d put in 8 hours of hard training in the four days before race day. That explained some of the burn in my legs as I got pedaling, but I think it was also the half mile walk in the mud we’d just done. I had lactic acid sloshing around in a way I’ve never experienced after an actual swim.

I felt totally frustrated with myself as I tried to find anything approaching the 20+ pace I thought I should be holding to no avail. Then, just when I was starting to feel the burning dissipate, I got caught in the exact same traffic snarl that did me in two years ago. Athletes were riding all over the road, many on hybrid and heavy, slow bikes were just cruising down the center of the lane making it impossible for faster cyclists, and more critically, cars, to safely pass. Two miles in I found myself eating tailpipe behind a car that could not get around this oblivious peloton. The bikes riding two and three abreast were traveling maybe 15 miles an hour thus the driver too was slowed to 15 and I, the same. With bikes and cars in both directions the car couldn’t safely get by so for several minutes I choked on exhaust while forced to a crawl. In all fairness to the driver, he or she was doing everything they could to drive safely and respectfully, there was just nowhere for them to go and no way for anyone to accelerate around the melee.

My irritation at this race grew inversely as the pace slowed and the air quality disintegrated. Finally there was a break in race and vehicular traffic and the car got away and I tried to make up some speed just in time to hang a left and head up the toughest climb of the day. We’d already been false-flatting for a while but now the grade increased for a significant mile-long haul. Somewhere in the middle of that uphill slog my watch buzzed a very disappointing first five mile lap of 17.6 mph.

At the top of the hill the course wound oddly through a school parking lot. This is when I realized the course was different than 2017 and that I had no idea what was next. I wished in that moment that I had done just the teensiest bit of race homework in the five days since I’d registered. I also wished course designers hadn’t routed us through this bizarre narrow parking lot. Once again I was stuck behind newer riders in a place where I couldn’t safely pass. Looking back at GPS this asinine diversion that was used to turn us around and send us back down the hill was fully a third of a mile and took almost two arduous minutes – that’s a lot on a sprint course.

Once out of the parking lot and heading back downhill I knew I should get low and fast, but between the cars, the novices, and realizing I didn’t know the course that well I just couldn’t find the courage to drop into aero. I kept my itchy fingers off the brakes but otherwise played it very safe descending. As soon as we swung right back onto the road where I’d hit the earlier traffic jam I knew I HAD to pick up the pace.

My legs were feeling better despite the climbing, so I shifted into my big rings and pushed. With a slight false flat downhill I was able to hold 24 mph for a few minutes which made me feel better and helped me overtake some of the people I’d been stuck behind for miles and miles at this point. There were some twists and turns and rollers for the next couple miles but lap two, miles five through ten, averaged 21.1 mph which felt like a vast improvement.

Heading back toward transition I rode past Scott and the pups at what I thought was an odd viewing location – not somewhere I expected to see them. Turns out while we were swimming and biking Scott had gone out to help Peyton’s husband, Brian, push his totally dead van off the road and into the lot where Scott was now spectating. I called to him and the hounds as I rode by on my way back in.

The last two miles took us to another rolling out and back and then once more onto the overpass and the rough road back to transition. Just like 2017 the bike dismount was a few hundred meters further than I expected and I slowed down way too soon losing probably 15 to 20 seconds of overall time. (I would say I’ll make sure to remember that for next time but I’m never doing this race again.) Between that error and the congested potholed final stretch I was forced back to a 19.5 average for those last 2.8 miles for a total bike time of 39:48 and 19.2 mph, according to GPS anyway. Official time was 12.6 miles, 40:10, and 18.6 mph average which I’m of course less thrilled with.

T2

Again my Garmin didn’t record any sort of bike-to-run time and our results don’t include our transitions so I don’t know. But I felt quick and efficient in T2. Given my beneficial rack placement and that I didn’t need to grab nutrition for a 5k I’m pretty sure I was under a minute. I also forgot to ditch my bike sunnies so as I was heading out the run-out chute I tried to put my run glasses overtop of the pair I was already wearing. I pulled the first pair off my face and tucked them into the back of kit feeling silly, but that was probably another few seconds I didn’t spend in T2.

Run

The first bit of the run is like an obstacle course up a steep winding ramp, similar in grade to a parking garage, across a bridge, and back down an identical steep winding ramp. It’s hard to pick up any sort of speed until this obstacle has been dispatched with and you’re on the actual run trail.

And I do mean “trail.” The pedestrian parking garage is the only bit of this 5k that takes place on pavement. The rest of the course is on a wooded dirt and lightly graveled trail. Under normal circumstances I find trail-running intimidating – I’m always afraid to step on something and roll my ankle. This race was not normal circumstances and as I tried to settle into some sort of speed and rhythm all I could think was, ‘I do not remember how to do this or what this should feel like.’

I discovered that when you haven’t been running you can actually forget how to do it. Over the month of July I had banked a grand total of 37 miles. The first couple weeks of August had been similarly low volume and I’d been forced to start doing a lot of my running on an anti-gravity treadmill. I knew intellectually that I should feel like maxed out hell during the whole 5k – sprint tris should be torture if you’re racing them right. But I couldn’t remember what maxed out hell felt like, where that red line was that I could hold onto for three miles. I was afraid to get too close to the red line I could no longer see or feel knowing that I was out here running with minimal fitness.

I was still trying to figure it out when I finished the first mile in 7:46. I was encouraged by those numbers. 7:40s felt respectable enough in my (unconditioned) condition. I also felt like I was probably playing things too safe and that I needed to pick up the effort for two miles to keep from feeling like I’d held back.

Of course just as I told myself to take it up a notch I was climbing. Most of mile two is a gradual but not unserious climb, made less unserious by the uneven footing. I did indeed increase my effort but I was also forced to slow as I ascended. I lost my grip on those 7:40s and dropped into the mid-8s as I crested the gravel grinder. I was happy to turn around at the run course’s halfway point but I was afraid to pick up too much speed on the trail heading down.

At the halfway point turnaround the triathlon course merged with an 12k run and the path grew a little more congested. I didn’t see a lot of women but a number of guys started passing me from that strange distance race. (Are 12ks a thing?) At first I told myself they were men and in a totally different event so just let them pass and stay steady. I still felt unsure of myself and  didn’t know how much more effort I could sustain for the next mile and change.

After a few minutes of being passed though it was really grating on my ego and I decided to put up more of a fight. These dudes were in no way my competition that day but for whatever reason they became my motivation to dig deeper. As the sixth or seventh guy came up on my left and was about to overtake me I stepped on the gas. I used the last remnants of the descent to drop into the low 7s and stayed put as well as I could when the ground flattened back out. I held that guy at bay as I ticked off mile two at 7:57 – not ideal but ok with the long climb and at least I’d kept it sub-8.

With a mile to go I was finally running what I would consider fast – in the 7:teens – and for the first time that morning I felt like I was remembering how to run. The pace, the turnover, the saying fuck-no to men who wanted to pass me, it all made me feel like my old pre-fracture self again and it made me happy.

There were a few more twists and turns and punchy uphills but for the most part I just had to maintain to the finish line. A half mile from the end I was pulling out 6:30s and wondering if I could hold onto them when my left shoe came untied. We had to whip around a tight turn and I almost stepped clear out of my sneaker. There was no way I was going to stop and take time away to lace the damn thing. I backed off my pace a touch and focused on managing my footfalls so I wouldn’t lose my footwear before the finish.

I managed to avoid a fiasco and pull down a 7:14 for that third mile. I could now see the finisher’s chute. I kept my shoe on as I rounded the final turns and took off fast as I could still muster. That last .1 (.16 if you consult my GPS) clocked a strong 6:27 average and I felt like I’d rediscovered a little piece of my run-self as I crossed the finish line. Final run time was 23:56 and overall was 1:19:49. I also learned later I had the second or third fastest female run of the day, giving me some hope that my run legs are still in there somewhere waiting for my bones to get fully healed.

Aftermath

Owensies and teammate, Fede, were waiting for me at the end of the chute. I got my medal and some food and joined them. Owens was ready for his finisher beer so we grabbed some 9am brewskies and went looking for the rest of the group.

Speed Sherpa Quantico Crew!

The weird, truncated awards ceremony was starting not too long after I finished and we wandered over thinking our very fast teammate, Marco, could have nabbed an overall spot. Ya see, the only awards that Quantico hands out at the race are the top 3 women and men overall, so unless we thought one of our group was in the running for one of those spots we probably wouldn’t have even stuck around. But we went to listen to the men’s awards.

Marco didn’t win sadly, but then the announcer moved onto the women. He announced the third place winner and her time of 1:18:something and Peyton perked up. “Wait at least according to my Garmin I was a couple minutes faster than that. I think I was 1:16” The announcer moved on to the second place finisher calling her name and her time of 1:17:something and Peyton got even more excited. The voice moved on to proclaim the overall female winner and called Peyton’s name. We ran forward cheering her on. She was a little shocked and we (I) were (was) a little obnoxiously ecstatic as we rushed her to the podium and took her picture.

Peyton wins! Despite our shitty swim wave and other maladies!

After the (very brief) awards ceremony we gathered our bikes and the whole team reconvened around Peyton’s Taco Bell-filled car in the parking lot. Initially I resisted her offer of day-old fastfood  but eventually I relented, accepting a car-temperature dorito-loco “taco.”

Tacos and cider at 9:30am on a Marine Corps base! Happy birthday, Peyton!

It actually kinda hit the spot but since I don’t plan on racing Quantico again next year I don’t plan on eating Taco Bell again. Ever. (Unless Peyton finds a different birthday weekend tri and continues supplying the post-race contraband.) I washed that fast food aberration down with a rosé cider (also Peyton-provided) before Scott and I rounded up the hounds for the drive back to DC.

Daenerys was tired from the morning on the drive back home.

It took most of the day for results to be posted online. Given that Peyton had won the whole dang thing with a 1:16 and I had a 1:19 I thought I’d probably placed pretty well, but I gave up on reloading the results page after a while and took a nap when I got home. I woke up to texts from friends congratulating me on my “podium” so apparently results were finally up.

I was very excited to learn I’d won the 30-39 age group – which you may notice is not a USA Triathlon sanctioned age group – and to have been 6th woman overall. There were 66 women in 30-39 and 197 women total so that wasn’t too shabby! It was far more than I’d expected considering I felt like I had forgotten how to run, had biked poorly, and hadn’t actually swum.

It would have been nice to have a regular awards ceremony at the race to celebrate the victory. Instead I got a nonvitation a couple weeks later to come to a “special” awards ceremony for all age group winners back on Quantico at 3pm on a Thursday. And this invitation came in snarky “PLEASE RSVP THIS IS YOUR SECOND NOTICE”  email form after the first email they sent went into my spam folder. I tried to be nice in my email declining the “invite,” and they sent me my award in the mail, but really who exactly do they think can attend a ceremony 40 miles from DC in the middle of a weekday afternoon.

It would have also been nice (for this blog and for posterity because, you may recall, I’m never doing this race again) to have had pictures. But there were no race photogs out on the course. I find this a bizarre omission from the Marine Corps Marathon organization – they know people love getting race pics – they even memorialized this fact on their very acid trip of a 2018 Marathon race shirt!

Seriously this shirt is terrifying.

Finally and most of all, it would have been nice to get USAT points for my best finish of the year. But this isn’t a USAT sanctioned event so my USAT ranking doesn’t reflect that I won, not just women 35-39 but all women in their 30s. Kinda feels like I did the whole annoying thing for nothing. Well nothing except the company of Owensies and Peyton and a stale taco, and I’d like to think I could come by those things without having to walk through the mud on an active military base next year.

In lieu of awards ceremony. And USAT points. (What the poop is an “age award” btw?)

Race Report: USA Triathlon Age Group Nationals 2019

Preamble
After making the decision to DNS Lake Placid, I reached out to my friend and prodigal Sherpette, Madi to ask whether she was returning to Cleveland for USA Triathlon Age Group National Championships (Nationals) in August. We’d had a big Sherpa crew up in 2018 and while the weekend had been a blast, most of the team was sitting this year out. Some due to injury or the impending arrival of mini Sherpinis, and many were staying home because they did not enjoy this course.
2018 Cleveland crew
I can’t say it was my favorite course either, but it’s an exciting honor to qualify for and to race Nationals, and as an oly taking place two weeks after Lake Placid it seemed like a good consolation race. Madi informed me that not only was she going, her amazing mom, Deb was coming, and she’d reserved and Airbnb with a second bedroom in case I wanted to join. How dang lucky am I to have these tri people? With that decision made I dug out my invitation from USA Triathlon to register – after a moment of panic trying to remember if I had actually qualified – and asked my mama if she would come too. And thus Madi and my mommy-and-me race weekend was born!
AGNC includes an olympic distance race on Saturday, for which you have to qualify by placing in the top 10% of your age group at a USAT sanctioned race, and a sprint distance on Sunday for which you don’t have to qualify. (Actually next year you will have to qualify for that as well.) The olympic race is larger and more competitive and like 2018, Madi and I opted to just race that one.
The Saturday race meant Friday packet pickup, so the four of us descended upon Cleveland from separate corners of the US on Thursday night. Madi had found us an Airbnb in Ohio City, which turns out to be the cutest neighborhood, filled with well-kept, beautiful old houses and charming restaurants and cafes. We had to constantly remind ourselves that August in Cleveland was lovely, but January, (hell, October,) not as much, so we probably shouldn’t buy one of those darling houses and move in.
My mama and I got in first so we wandered the hood and hit up a corner bodega as well as a proper grocery for everything (and more) that we’d need that weekend. Once Madi and her mom, Deb, got in we  ventured lit’rally nextdoor to a critically-lauded Mexican restaurant named, Momocho. The setting, like the neighborhood, was lovely. (And the location couldn’t be beat.) The food however didn’t live up to the hype – not bad but underwhelming. (My mama, who lives in Mexico half the year, was skeptical that the chef had ever been to the country.)   
Race Day Eve
Poor West Coast Madi was up first to take some work calls, but all of us were up and moving by 8. The Airbnb only had a french press and ain’t no triathlete got time for that so we hit one of those charming cafes in the neighborhood for caffeine before hitting the expo. We wisely got to packet pickup shortly after it opened at 10am, before the line was too terrible. Similar to last year the packet tent was a bit of a cluster. It was better organized this year but still confusing with a lot of waiting.
After picking up our packets and doing a little shopping – purely utilitarian as I’d only packed one waterbottle and the USAT swag offerings aren’t the best – we all headed to Tri Bike Transport to pick up our steeds. Madi and I had both shipped our whips, Tina and Koopa Troop respectively, and while pricey it made life so much easier. There’s no parking at the race on race day and we had to wait hours to get cars in to load our bikes. This year we just picked them up, did a quick spin to make sure everything was in working order, and racked them on the absurdly tall racks in transition. (Oh and Madi had a little e-pedal panic attack because nothing can ever actually be that easy, but over all it was pretty simple.)
Koop getting his pedals back on at Tri Bike Transport
Koopa hangin’ and waitin’ for race day – hangin’ on way too high racks though
We had also planned to take advantage of the practice swim to see how Lake Erie compared to last year’s scary conditions. The swim course was visible from Tri Bike Transport and I’d noticed with some trepidation (ok, sheer terror) that even from shore the current looked strong and the waves, angry. I was not happy to view whitetops all the way to the horizon.
Oh hey! What’s with all those whitecaps?!
Apparently the water was as bad as it looked from afar, and the swim practice had been cancelled, along with a morning swim competition. Hearing this midday Friday was my first inkling the swim on race day might be full-on scrapped; it put that bug in my ear and that suggestion burrowed into my brain over the course of Friday afternoon and evening so that by Saturday morning I was fully committed to not swimming.
The upside of no practice swim – aside from the obvious not having to swim part – was that we were done with packet pickup and bike racking pretty quickly. We got back to the Airbnb by early afternoon and took advantage of one of those charming cafes in our adorable neighborhood, reminding ourselves, ‘it’s August; it’s August in Cleveland and we don’t want to move here; we really won’t like it in February.’
Birthplace of John Heisman in our cute lil neighborhood!
Back at the Airbnb we bathed and got as much pre-race prep done before dinner as we could, then met up with fellow Speed Sherpette Kathy at an Italian restaurant on the main 25th St drag a few blocks from us. It was called Bar Cento and they gave us this fabulous canopied booth right in the front and showered us with carbs and  questions about the race. It was delicious and we should have probably just come back the next night when we all would have been able to partake in the wine list. (Instead I just sipped vicariously through my mommy.)
Here’s Madi and I with Kathy since we failed to snap a dinner pic even at our bedouin table
Back home after dinner I had a call with Coach Josh to talk through the next day. This bizarro little-to-no running recovery year has had me pretty confused about how or whether to attack a race. When I signed up for Nationals it was my consolation for having to pull out of Ironman Lake Placid.  I couldn’t run a marathon in July but a 10k in August seemed eminently doable and train-for-able. Then blah blah blah another stress fracture scare and here I was in August having taken most of July off and having run a max of seven miles once since last October. This is the season of plans going to pot so Josh got on the horn with me to talk through it.
I put him on speaker and Deb and Madi joined my mom and I in our room and it ended up being a goofy group call. I told Josh that I somehow still had my period eight days after it started so that was fun. My new IUD is making the joys of female athletehood even more joyous. Apart from the constant bleeding as we talked things through we decided on a clear goal for the next morning: to take the bike hard and blow up on the run. Josh suggested we use this protracted run recovery (and complete lack of real goals) to see what would happen if I really push things. He said he’d never seen me blow up on a run so why not push the envelope. It was both kind of a funny goal, but a reassuringly clear one at the same time. Go chomp at the bike, and leave nothing on the run course. Got it.
After our group call Deb was great at actually keeping Madi and I to an early bedtime schedule. I had told her that I always aimed for a 9pm pre-race bedtime only to inevitably tuck in at 10pm. She (warmly) hounded us to get our last bit of race prep done and get to bed. With her maternal insistence we succeeded in an early tuckin and I got some decent Zzzs before the 4:45 alarm.
Race Morning
Thanks to the awkward across-the-room placement of the outlet I didn’t try to snooze when the alarm sounded. We all sort of walking deaded around each other filling water bottles and smacking down bananas and whatever pre-dawn carbs we could stomach. The mommies gave us a lift to the race drop off at 5:30am and Madi and I walked the 10ish minutes down to transition while they returned to the Airbnb with plans to ditch the car and Uber back down in an hour.
Transition area at dawn
And what a beautiful dawn it was!
We had plenty of time in transition before it would close at 6:40. After dropping my bag off by my bike I opted to porta first. Walking through the massive transition area everyone was talking about whether the swim would be canceled. Eavesdropping on my rack mates and the people queued for the bathroom there seemed to be an equal split between athletes who wanted to swim and athletes who did not.
I was still fully in the latter category.  More than that I had so completely convinced myself that there couldn’t possibly be a swim that the suggestion by some that there might be was really throwing me for a loop. Hearing everyone discuss it I started to feel a glut of panic well up in the pit of my gut. (Or maybe it was just the regular [irregular] race morning GI pyrotechnics but it seemed more existential than that.)
People were opining that since race organizers had announced the (wetsuit legal) water temp they must be planning on having us swim. I was trying to keep it together but really I was utterly horrified by this very convincing argument. Why would they tell us all the wetsuit-legal water temp if they didn’t plan on sticking us in said water?? I started weighing the embarrassment of a DNS with the risk of drowning in Lake Erie, the prospect of swimming so upset me.
Layered on top of this panic was my confusion at its source. Sure swimming is my weakest discipline by far, but I don’t root for swims to be canceled. With a bit of rudimentary self-analysis I realized I was harboring more post-traumatic stress from last year’s death than I realized. In 2018 an older gentleman had died in the swim, and it had happened right next to me. As I picked apart the why behind my swim-trepidation it became clear to me that I associated this swim course with death, and my proximity to last year’s fatality had me feeling marked for this year.
As I bathroomed, set up my spot, and tried to talk myself off the DNS ledge, an announcement came over the loudspeakers that the swim was a go – but that it would be cut in half to 750m, and that we would only swim 150m from shore. The relief was immediate and intense. It was also a perfect compromise. Those maniacs who still wanted to swim in this homicidal lake would get to do so, but those sane among us who recognized its deadly fury wouldn’t have to venture too far from shore. (And as a bonus for me, these incredibly fast athletes wouldn’t have the whole almost-mile to pull away from me – less time and distance for me to make up after I dragged myself out of the lake, undoubtedly close to last in my age group.)
Energized with relief I rejoined Madi (one of those pro-swimming maniacs) and we found our mommies. I porta’ed once more before Madi zipped me into my wetsuit and we headed toward the beach. Her wave was going off at 7:12 – a nice change from 2018 when she was in the final wave at 9:30. My 35-39 ladies were scheduled for a 7:26am start, so also a pleasantly early slot. We hugged it out with promises of beer by 11am and Madi marched off to crush her race day.
Swim
Right after Madi’s wave was sent off at 7:12 we yellow cap women were sent down to the beach. We were in the hole behind the on-deck 25-29 men who were already in the water waiting for their gun. At 7:22 they were on their way and we were allowed into the lake to take a few minutes’ warmup. I swam a little way out to feel out the waves and settle my heartrate and breathing. The temperature was 76 degrees which was comfortable in my sleeveless wetsuit so that was at least one positive.
At 7:25 the announcer called us back to line up for the start and I had to hustle to the shore to get in position. (After overcoming fantasies of DNSing it would have been pretty sad to be disqualified before the race even started.) We vibrated in the waist deep water through the final 30 second countdown, everyone wishing each other well like tri-women always do. Right on time the airhorn starter gun blared and we leapt enmasse into the waves.
I had seeded myself towards right in the back line of these fierce women. I decided to charge the 150m to the first turn buoy to try to stay with the group as long as I could. As we took off both the lake and the competition were violent – though not intentionally so. I got the sense the that whole group was afraid of the conditions and we all swam together to that first righthand turn. It didn’t seem like anyone broke away as we swam out, and almost no one fell behind. I can’t quite explain it but I’ve never felt a group stay together like that in a swim. We were pulling each other along, looking out for one another, and I was thrilled by this perceived sisterhood and also that I was keeping up with the whole cohort. The violence stemmed from sheer proximity. 120 women thrashing together against the waves, there were bound to be some unintentional blows.
At the turn the group started to break up. I had positioned myself to be close to the buoy so I wouldn’t have to swing too far out and add unnecessary mileage. (According to my Garmin that buoy was 200m from shore and not 150 so definitely no need to add distance.) Immediately upon turning we were headed into the sun and I could see all of nothing in front of me. Between the glare and the swells I couldn’t for the life of me get a bead on the next sighting buoy. I could see a woman a few feet ahead of me, another woman on my right and one more on my left and I decided to just sight off them and hope they knew where we were going. It was almost impossible to see the woman directly in front of me so down this long way I just kept pace with the athletes to my right and left, making sure to stay sandwiched between the two figuring I wouldn’t be able to veer too far off course if I was between two other people.
As we neared the second and final turn buoy some 400ish meters later I could finally see a bit. We hooked that last right back toward shore and it was pretty easy to sight the exit arch. (Although we all know I’ve had some trouble with that in the past.) I tried to catch some toes a couple times but they kept getting away from me. Soon enough though my fingertips brushed the bottom and I stood to trudge up the beach and out of that perennially angry lake. Final swim time was 17:01, not great – but then again, GPS says I swam almost 900m so maybe not terrible? (I have no idea if this overswim is due to organizers’s inability to measure or my inability to sight.)
T1
I was very happy to put Lake Erie (literally) behind m, though it hadn’t been nearly the monster I’d built up in my pre-race mind. Sure there’d been some early jostling within our crowded wave, but otherwise this year was cake compared to last year. (Ya know, I don’t love cake. Let’s say this year was pork buns compared to last year.)
Bai forever Lake Erie!
The most intimidating part of my day was over but as my feet hit land I had some new issues to contend with. The first was whether to run T1. Normally yes, obviously, grab that time. But this summer I’ve had to conserve my bones and I’d already had a few races where my transition runs had been unnervingly painful. Ultimately I decided to slow jog it in. I didn’t want to walk but I didn’t take it at a full run. It was a long haul – about a third of a mile. I didn’t go at it aggressively clearly, but I tried to be very deliberate. Four minutes and 45 seconds later I was over the mount line and trying to mentally prepare for what I’d been ordered to make the biggest part of my day.

Bike

The bike course started up a hill out to the 191 west until a 180 near the first mile at which point there was a gradual downhill for a bit. I passed a few people climbing to that turnaround and then hung back a bit for the tight turn. Once we were headed back east toward downtown Cleveland I dropped into my aeros and tried to find some speed. I stayed low downhill which is a confidence win for me – I hate riding a descent in aero, far away from the brakes if I need them. (Yes I’m a chicken like that still but even Gwen Jorgensen had to learn how to trust a descent and I’m working on it.) It helped that I knew the course from last year; I knew it wasn’t a long downhill and the road there was smooth and new.

Climbing away from transition and onto the course

The road on the rest of the course was less smooth – even in spots where it was also new. Last year the overpasses heading out and coming in had been the bane of my (and everyone’s) tri-xistence. We’d had to navigate the under-construction freeway narrowing to a single pothole-riddled lane. I had unabashedly sat up the whole time and hoped I wouldn’t have to do the same this year. Organizers had boasted that the city had repaved a lot of those problem sections so I anticipated a less hellish trip in 2019.

Will this year be less like biking on the surface of the moon?? (Read on to find out!)

With construction over we got to use both wide lanes which was great – especially great for the people passing me – and there were fewer moonsized craters, but this “new” pavement was not the smooth luxurious ride that had been advertised. Not all pavement is created equal and this stuff was the pits. No we didn’t have to dodge missing chunks of highway this year, but the new pitch was that ribbed stuff that sets your wheels and teeth chattering. The ridged road also wound up a decent hill and I sat my ass up, disappointed in the conditions and myself.

Once off the bridge and back on a better patch of highway I got low again and tried to make up some speed. That first five mile lap was the slowest of the day at 18.9 mph. I felt like I was already noncompliant with my orders to punch the bike so I dug into my big ring for the couple miles of flat road I knew were ahead of me.

Within a mile of exiting the underwhelming “new” overpass we were diverted off the highway onto a parallel access road for a couple miles. I stayed low and fast (for me) and decided to thrash my legs here – some self-flagellation for my lackadaisical riding earlier – keeping the speed around 21mph.

Around mile 7.5 we fully exited the highway and highway adjacency to wind through some Cleveburg neighborhoods – the first of which (Asiatown apparently) was badly in need of even some of that sweet “new” pavement. The pockmarked street had the gatorade in my aerobottle splashing all over the place. I had to let go of those super-20mph speeds.

Around this time I also desperately needed to blow my nose. In the week before the race, in addition to that never-ending period, I’d been dealing with the remnants of a sinus infection. It wasn’t a bad one but I still had a lingering nasal drip and as I rode it was starting to actively drip drip drip out of my nose. I’m totally incapable of snot-rocketing so I was reduced to mouth breathing as I tried to wipe away my mucus mustache with my hand. Gross. I repeatedly wiped my face, then wiped my hand on my kit, and never seemed to even slightly plug the nasal faucet.

I perversely hoped a photog would capture the full extent of my nastiness. The rest of the ride I never succeeded in either emptying my nasal passages or effectively wiping my face. Eventually I got used to the discomfort and just rode with it. Miles five through ten were marginally better than one through five with a 19.4 mph average.

The course also got more pleasant near mile ten. We had a nice long straightaway with minimal ascending or descending. This two-and-a-half mile stretch took us down Chester Ave and past our 2018 Airbnb and here I will remind everyone that a house on the course sounds great until you can’t leave race morning because all of the roads are closed. I had some silly pangs of nostalgia as I spun by our year-ago digs.

I also took this long flat as opportunity to feed myself. I’ve been using GU stroopwafels this season and my tummy so far approves. I broke off a chunk of one from my bento box and let a couple 30-34 women pass me as I fueled, noting their ages on their very fast calves and shrugging them off as not-my-competition. Calories in I got back to work as I was nearing the left off Chester and onto the mile-long descent that led to the turnaround. Again I stayed in aero downhill and was proud of myself for doing so. I think the key for future races is to know the course well enough like I did here to feel confident about the hill grade and if and when I would need my brakes. (Filing that bit of self-realization away for all future races – who wants to ride or drive every bike course with me from here on out?!)

That mile downhill was immediately followed by tight-ish 180 and a mile back up the same hill. Josh’s orders had been to hammer this ascent because I would have those flat Chester Ave miles again to recover. I tried to heed his words but as soon as I had flipped around to get my climb on a woman came riding by shouting, “and now we go back up!” She was laughing and so I started laughing  and had one of those emo oh-my-goddd-I-love triathlon moments. I recovered my senses and got to work using that tri-jester as a rabbit up the hill. (Not drafting of course – she was many lengths ahead of me by then!)

Back on good ol’ Chester Ave I got low and tried to focus hard on finishing strong. I was now more than halfway through the bike and miles ten through 15 had averaged 19.6mph. Decent considering all the climbing but I was determined to bring it home with a lot more. After all, I had a run to blow up on!

Again I used the flat straightaway to chomp down some more stroopwafel and I set a mental goal for myself to average over 20 for the last ten miles. I was able to pick off a number of people though honestly I think they were mostly the last stragglers from the age groups ahead of mine. Either way I was doing my best to wear out my legs and was successfully keeping things around 21mph.

Getting back into pockmarked Asiatown I had to slow up a bit to dodge the warzone street obstacles. At one point I didn’t see a massive crevice in the road until I was right on top of it and the hard thud of my bicycle launched the remainder of my aerebottle contents all over my face. (Which in aero was only inches from the top of said the suddenly-empty bottle.) Now I was covered in gatorade and snot, a potently sticky combination. I was also out of liquid calories.

I wasn’t too worried about the caloric deficit as I had begun to develop a side stitch after mile 15. I’d never had a stitch on the bike and kind of wondered at this new sensation. It didn’t feel too terrible while cycling but I worried about what it meant for my run if I didn’t work it out over the next ten miles.  In the moment I thought maybe I’d had too many sugary calories but in retrospect I blame the snot. Side cramps are usually a result of lack of oxygen and I couldn’t properly breathe. Looking back if I could change one thing about race day I would have thought to properly blow my post-sick post-lake nose in T1, I think it could have saved my run. (Sorry for the spoiler but the run was the blowup disaster of Josh’s dreams.)

After Asiatown came the mostly flat highway-parallel service road. I shifted back into my big ring and pushed my legs intentionally to screaming. It worked and as we were turning back onto the 191 around mile twenty my watch buzzed a 20.8 mph average for the previous five miles. Right on the money and I just needed to do the same back to transition.

Unfortunately I hadn’t factored the “newly paved” overpass into my mid-race goal-making. With just three miles to go suddenly I was vibrating back uphill. I stayed in aero as long as I could but eventually sat up again, though this time it was more in reaction to the grade of the ascent rather than the quality grade of the pavement. I also exchanged more knowing climbing laughs with another woman – this time I was doing the passing – and my love for the sport eclipsed the misery of the road conditions.

Off that damn bridge for the final time there was a mile or so left to hammer. It was a mostly downhill and people were flying down it to finish strong. I was intimidated by the descent but I pushed past the fear, dropped back onto my bars, and pushed with all I could creeping past 30mph for a stretch.

I was proud of myself for that final aero push as I pulled back into transition. The overpass had dropped me back below a 20mph average for the final five miles but I was happy with how I’d finished. Overall I did 1:16:10 on the bike and averaged 19.6mph. In the moment I was mostly pleased with that as I jogged Koop back to my rack.

T2

That final proud push didn’t do anything for my sidestitch though. And what hadn’t been too painful on the bike became a more pronounced problem once I started trying to run the bike in.

As I reached my rack I tried to slow down and breath into my right side where the knot was getting louder. I opted to ignore the caloric options I’d left out for myself. I was hungry – I was wearing rather than digesting a lot of my aero bottle nutrition after all – but hunger seemed preferable to the stabbing bellyache. I felt like maybe the pain was subsiding as I inhaled and exhaled slowly and took it easy pulling my sneakers and race belt on. I mostly walked toward the run course, hoping that little ball of pain receptors had worked itself out over the 2:25 I’d taken in T2.

Run

The run out is directly next to the bike out so it starts up the same hill. This year’s course was a little different than last; in 2018 we’d run two laps, each of which started with a quarter mile, steep grinding ascent. This time around we skipped that grinder swapping it out for a less steep, much longer mile climb right off the bat.

I fell into healthy Liz autopilot and pacing, attacking the run as soon as I crossed the timing mat, which hurt from the jump. I didn’t look at my watch for the first couple minutes just running off perceived exertion. When I did glance down at my watch I saw that it was still tracking me in transition. I tried to click ahead to the next stage but it kept beeping at me and doing nothing. Frustratedly I ended that workout and restarted it under the pure run category.

I’d been running by feel, and I didn’t feel very fast, so imagine my surprise when I finally got my watch working and I saw that I was running uphill in the 7:30s. Of course things hurt. I was in no shape for that kind of pace uphill after the bike. I backed off the speed, confident the cramp that was now screaming in my right side belly would quiet.

First I latched onto some mid-8 pacing for a few minutes. I was being passed by more people than I am comfortable with on a run but I was also still passing other people at that pace so it felt ok on the embattled ego. But quickly I realized even mid-8s were too much for climbing with a tummy full of glass shards and I had to back off further into the low 9s.

Now everyone was passing me and on top of the physical sensation of being appendectomied from the inside I was totally demoralized. We reached the top of that first big climb as my sort of functional watch buzzed the first mile: a disappointing 8:37. I had made it about half a mile before the wheels had come off. If Josh was looking for run explosives he’d gotten them in the first 800 meters.

I was sure that at some point this cramp would abate and I would get to really run. (Flashbacks to Boston 2017 anyone?) The second mile was mostly flat and downhill and I assured myself that all I needed was to get my heartrate under control and the pain would dissipate. We ran through the first aid station and my tummy was hungry-grumbling but I didn’t want to chance any calories yet so I just grabbed a cup of water, took a sip and got rid of it.

When we got to start threading downhill I waited for the relief that must be coming but the stitch just stayed stuck. I said fuck it and tried leaning forward into gravity and picking up the pace but that was a mistake. As I tried to accelerate downhill I felt like I might be about to lose the few calories I’d actually gotten into my stomach. I eased back up opting not to lose my breakfast if I could help it.

Over the next few slow miserable miles – all of which clocked in the 8:40s – I just tried to stay alive and keep my food down. I did think a few times about just pulling over and pulling my trigger – maybe it would help and surely the momentary humiliation was preferable to the lifelong humiliation of race results memorialized on the internet. I couldn’t bring myself to puke in front of all those other athletes and spectators though, and so I just soldiered unhappily on. It was everything I could do to keep myself out of the 9:00s.

The fifth mile was the same as the 2018 course and included a couple punchy climbs followed by a knot of switchbacks and tight turns. It was my slowest mile of the day at 8:47 and I really didn’t want to finish the race with that sort of disappointment so I gritted my teeth through the pain and tried to pick up the pace.

Fortunately the sixth and final mile included a long descent to give us all a boost to the finish line. It’s a steep downhill, around .2 miles long, and as I approached it I remembered the year before when I had run fitness and still trusted my legs and ran down that hill in the low 6s. Now I accelerated but I also held way back, sticking mostly with low 7s, afraid my bones might let me down if I hit it any harder.

When the course flattened back out there was less than half a mile to go and suddenly I felt sort of capable of running. Maybe all I’d needed that whole bloody course was to sprint a couple minutes to dislodge whatever was gumming up my insides. There was no time to think (or be disappointed) about that though. I was somehow now running a sub-7 and I felt like I could just about hold on the rest of the way in.

Final and only not-embarrassing mile

With a quarter mile to go organizers throw a dog agility course type ninja warrior ramp at you. It’s incredibly steep up and down and last year I’d descended it with trepidation but this year I charged up and down the stupid thing with abandon, suddenly throwing skeletal caution to the wind.

Turning down the finisher chute I was still sub-7 but both fading and feeling my stomach start to rebel again. This time it really felt like the morning’s caloric intake was working its way back up. I tried to keep my foot on the gas and my breakfast in my belly as I ran home. Crossing the finish line I had to swallow back the sick.

My final run time was 52:28, more than six minutes slower than last year, and on an easier course. According to my Garmin that last mile was a 6:54 which I think may be a mistake, but at least some of it was indeed sub-7 so looking back at the run I just don’t even know what to think. I’m mad and disappointed but I was in a lot of pain and I don’t think I could have pushed any harder through it. If only I’d blown my nose back in T1!

Aftermath

My final overall time was 2:32:47. No lie, I was disappointed. 83rd out of 120. Back when I thought I’d be able to properly train for the run I wanted to be top 50% of my age group at Nationals and instead I was barely in the top 70%. When I knew I wouldn’t be able to run well I wanted to go top 50% on the bike and instead I was 35th percentile. I felt like I had ridden well and hard, so this result especially has gnawed at me. How can so many women be so much faster than me on the bike? I feel like I’m going at it with all my might and they’re just turning out such bigger, better paces.

Honestly I’ve felt crappy about it since Cleveland. The bike confidence I’d been building after Escape the Cape was pretty well destroyed. I try to  tell myself that it’s not a fair comparison, that Nationals is by definition the fastest women in the country and it doesn’t mean I’m so far behind the curve. But the seed of self-doubt has successfully supplanted my burgeoning self-confidence.

Ran into teammies Kim and Larren and Chris as well!

I didn’t let myself dwell outwardly though. Madi and the moms had been at the finish line so there was post-race celebrating to do. We found a picnic table by the lake and Madi and I procured some 10am brewskis. It was great to just sit in the sun and relax for a bit, and great that this year we were both finished early.

It’s 10am somewhere!

After a bit we collected our gear and our steeds. While on a somewhat lengthy line to  check Tina and Koopa Troop back into tribiketransport I remembered I’d dropped a chunk of stroopwafel into the hole where the shifting cables enter the top tube during my ride. I could see the misplaced nutrition but I couldn’t reach it. Surrounded by other waiting athletes, and with Madi’s encouragement, I flipped Koopa over and began shaking him up and down over my head until the offending snack found its way back out. I definitely got some stares but at least I didn’t ship my bike home with rotting food bits in him.

Eventually we headed out of the Edgewater Park area and ordered a Lyft back to the Airbnb. Logistically it was so much easier this year and I think tribiketransport was worth the $300. If I decide to go to Milwaukee – 2020’s Nationals venue – I think I’ll pony up for transport again. Of course, maybe my ego needs a break from these fast ladies.

Afterparty

After cleaning and cute-ing up, Madi and I joined Speed Sherpa teammates Kathy, Larren, and Kim at a spot called Townhall which was on 25th St a few blocks away. (Madi seriously hit it out of the park with the Airbnb location.) We snacked and drank and made friends with passing dogs before heading out to dinner with the mamas.

Clean and cute!

I’d made a reservation a short drive away at a restaurant called Distill Table. It had won best new restaurant in Cleveland and the write ups were glowing. And honestly we should have just stayed on 25th Street. Between the sad wine list (all Ohio wines – just no) and fully mediocre food (and service) I wish we’d just gone back to Bar Cento from Friday night.

Clean and cute with the mamas!
Maybe after a few more years of climate change I’ll be down with the Ohio wines

So the food scene in Cleveland is still lacking as much as my bike game. But we had a fun weekend in a cute neighborhood with friends and family. Madi raced great and will hopefully get another Team USA spot and I very much succeeded in my goal to blow up on the run. Oh and we watched Coco when we got back to the Airbnb and it’s impossible to be unhappy watching that perfect pelicula. Great weekend overall and a great couple years racing in Cleveland – though I won’t miss swimming in Lake Erie.

Bai Cleveland!