Flower City Duathlon: First Multisport of 2011, First Race as PBMC Team Member

I've already mentioned that I will be racing for PBM Coaching this season. However, it feels so much more official now that I have the uniform, which is badass. Not only does it have a solid design, but I am a huge fan of orange and black. While I don't really feel like I am in race shape - I am definitely aware that I am at a level of fitness that I am content with. But if you know my mindset: the word "content" is merely a stepping stone to something like "ecstatic" or "amped". What has surprised me is that even though I'm 12+ lbs over race weight, I have been rather comfortable hitting 7:00/mi pace on runs of any distance (even 13 miles) and my cycling is continuing to improve quite a bit - I averaged 22.3MPH on a 20 mile ride that was a very comfortable tempo. That is something that I've never really done much of before, but know it's a good sign this early in the year.

The Kit.

The greatest difficulty I have been having is remaining disciplined and focused in my own training. I feel this is purely a matter of having had no structure whatsoever to my training for well over a year and wanting to take my competition to the next level, but not knowing fully how to do it. I had a long period of mental lapse, which hurt my fitness quite a bit, but really hurt me in that my weight jumped from:

• January 30: 160
• March 5: 145
• March 15: 156
• March 24: 152
• April 11: 163
• April 23: 157
• April 29: 162

Now, that's a frightening fluctuation in weight. Athletically, sure, it sucks - but it is horrible to jump weight around like that for general health. So, in order to 1) be smart and 2) be fit, I need to slowly get back to where I belong at below 150. I have always felt smoother, stronger, and overall better when I am down at that range. I've been reading Sports Nutrition for Endurance Athletes by Monique Ryan, which is a great resource and has an excellent focus on proper planning for optimizing training. The timing of meals is something I know was beneficial, but this book has shed some great light on it for me.

Above written April 28,2011

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April 30, 2011: Post Race.

So, for the race: The Flower City Duathlon, Rochester, NY. 5K/20mi/5K (actual distances: 3.20mi/20.06mi/2.80mi). Two nights before I could not sleep at all, I slept a total of about three hours and just could not get comfortable. This resulted in me eating 250g of chocolate bars and just overall feeling like junk.I made sure to get in bed as early as I could while still actually being able to fall asleep. I got to bed around 9:15PM, giving me 8 hours sleep - which is quite good for a 5:15AM wake up time. At 6:00 I brought my bike over to transition and got a great spot (the TA is about 1K from where I live), then came back and walked over at 6:35. I arrived at 6:45, and got everything together. Met up with Mike Hoffman, a good friend of mine, and got situated then did a 1.5mi warm up. The area wasn't optimal for a bike warm up so we stuck to the run.

(Badass pic of Mike Hoffman and I at the start...and the only time I looked any bit good in the race! Although Mike was quite solid throughout.)

The race started out at a good pace, not too fast, but my legs could not find a groove. There were 4 of us up front (in the under 40 group) and at around 2.25 one guy made a bit of a move and Mike went with him. I was feeling strained already and decided to hold back just a little to save for the bike and second run. I was also confident in my T1 to gain back some time. They finished at 18:30 and I came through in a fairly weak 18:43 (5:51/mi). 5:51 should be a pretty comfortable pace and something I should be able to tempo hard (but not race) for 10K. I had a good transition, 0:49 and four of us left T1 together. Mike and I took off pretty well on the bike, flipping the lead a couple time and moving along. Had a quick chat being pumped about rolling as the top 2, which was pretty sweet. Then bad things started to happen. At about mile 5, on a small (and this course is flat) hill I felt my calf start to twitch - early signs of a cramp. I ate properly coming into the race and was confused as to why I was already getting signs of cramps. I kept rolling, but Mike started to get away from me. I kept hold of him as best as I could without forcing cramps, but he was able to get a full minute on me on the bike. At mile 16 I threw up a little in my mouth and was burping for the following 5 minutes, which threw off whatever I did have going for me. Also, I was passed by 3 people on the ride - 2 from the U40 age group and one guy who was 45 and started 3:00 after the U40 field. He absolutely demolished the bike (fastest leg by 2:00). I finished with a 54:36 (22.0MPH), 38 second slower than my comfortable tempo ride on Tuesday. Coming into T2 as I was pulling my left shoe off, my hips and hamstrings cramped simultaneously: luckily I was able to somewhat quell this by standing up and stretching (slight downhill helped me out). I had an okay dismount - struggling to not force more cramps - and went into T2. My fingers were a bit numb as it was still low-mid 40's, and I had the worst time trying to get my helmet off which was pretty frustrating. T2 was in 0:37, and I got out on the road again and was 20 seconds behind 5th place and 30+ seconds behind 4th. At this point the wheels were falling off and I was just focused on keeping my turnover and heel striking so I wouldn't cause the calves to fully lock up (typically I'm midfoot, especially in racing). I just focused on the back in front of me and caught 5th place in about 1.3mi, he stuck with me until about mile 2 when I put on a surge to drop him. He started to hold but then I opened a gap. This single surge was the only time I felt like I was moving during the entirety of the race, and it was only 30 seconds or so. I tried to reel in Mike as much as I could, but nothing was working for me and I only gained 6 seconds on him in the run, whereas I can normally drop 30+ seconds like nothing. I finished the 2.80 mile run in an abomination of 17:30 (6:15/mi). Total time: 1:32:14 for 5th place (3rd in M20-24), 0:25 behind Mike (4th place) and 4:03 behind the leader.

Now, after the race I have two options: be disappointed because I had a pretty bad race overall or learn from this. First lesson: I need to train properly for tri's and du's, recently the whole of my focus has been on cycling, which has paid off in recent races. However, this has left running on the back burner and I haven't done a single real workout since December. Workouts begin next week and so do bricks! Second lesson: SLEEP is extremely important. I felt pretty uncomfortable during the entire race today and the race was a constant grind, from the gun. Third lesson: Get fit - both physically and nutritionally. These go hand in hand and I am working toward this, effective really yesterday (Friday).

The good thing about losing a race: it highlights areas of improvement and lets you know there is a lot of work to be done. Considering how horrible I felt throughout the entire race, it went quite well. I'm definitely going to talk to Kurt about the next steps to take, but it will definitely include work towards triathlon - not bike racing. I have a road race tomorrow morning (which will be interesting) and a race next Saturday. After that the UR Cycling season is over. However, next week's bike race will simply be a hard effort at the end of the week and I won't be specifically training for the race itself.

TriForGlory32: TriForGlory (thirty) 2.0

New Logo, same old blog! I had to do some overhaul of the blog and just resulted in ditching TriForGlory. Luckily I was able to save all the old posts so nothing was lost.

Welcome to TriForGlory32.blogspot.com!

ECCC Championships: TTT, Road Race, Crit

My first (and, sadly, last) collegiate race weekend - well at least as an undergrad - was at Penn State this past weekend. It also was my first Criterium and Team Time Trial! Being Class D has its perks and its downfalls. The major downfall is early ass races: now this wouldn't be so bad in warmer climates - but in the northeast is usually wet and cold. Saturday we had the TTT @ 8:45AM, which was followed by the Road Race @ 10:10AM. Both races were at the Black Moshannon State Park, definitely the most awesome cycling area to which I have been!

As the races were so close together and Kevin, Chris, and I were doing our first TTT the plan was to use it as a solid effort warm up, but by no means to go balls out and hurt our chances in the RR. The real plan was to beat RIT, by whatever margin. It was a 9.5 mile course, with two pretty long, but not too steep, climbs. We hit it from the start at a solid tempo, but definitely not too taxing of a pace. We only needed two finishers - which would allow for the eventual drop of one of our three. Surprisingly, in an extremely short time, we caught the team that started before us - the starts were separated by 30 seconds. Sadly RIT was starting after us so we wouldn't have a good gauge of how far ahead/behind they might be. We came up the first climb at an okay clip and then hit the downhill. Chris took a massive pull for nearly the entire downhill section, which ended up being his last pull. Coming to a bit of a flat, we crossed a bridge and hit another uphill. We started to drop Chris and decided we should let him bridge back so he could give us another pull - but he was pretty toast from his massive pull and the climbs (he's a real solid sprinter, but Kevin and I are much more of climbers) - and we dropped him when we hit the next incline. From here on out Kevin and I took pulls at a solid tempo, neither of us caring to really push the pace. We finished feeling good about the fact that we were so smooth for having only practiced TTT once before. Later we realized we were only 6 seconds behind the winner (Bucknell) and about 2 minutes ahead of any other teams. So had we not waited up for Chris that first time, or actually treated it like somewhat of a race, we likely would have had the win. Oh well, it was fun and a good experience. Oh yeah...and we beat RIT by about 3 minutes.

Now, for the REAL event, 21.5 mile Road Race. Two Category 5 climbs, and one (AWESOME) Category 2 climb! I was pretty excited for this race, as I am a big fan of big hills (aka mountains). The race was split between D1 and D2 - for school sizes, as the road conditions were slick at best and there were some very intense descents with hard turns. And, frankly, D's are not nearly skilled enough to be trusted in a pack of 60+ on such a course. So the race went out, immediately into one of the smaller climbs, at a pretty conservative pace. Once we got a mile or so in people started to actually bike, and some of the guys who didn't ride all season were probably getting strung out already - poor souls. Lots of hills to go solo. We came to the first descent, which seemed to last forever - and at mid-30's MPH that's a long distance. Once we got to the next climb Kevin said, "Oh wow, we get to use our legs again". I was spinning a little during the downhill without actually accelerating, just to keep my legs moving. The second climb broke up the pack some - but mainly strung out some of the riders, many of whom were able to reattach on the following downhill as riding along was very beneficial in our race as no one was crushing the downhills and being alone you had more freedom to cruise. The third climb, as we expected, provided the separation of the field that was purely inevitable. About two-thirds up the climb, Kevin started to work the pace a little - but still within his comfort zone. Many people responded, but only a Lehigh guy and myself pushed the front with Kevin. We came down the next descent still the three of us having a noticeable lead. It was really foggy and we didn't have good visibility. So the hard left leading into the Cat 2 climb came as a surprise, despite knowing it was going to come eventually. I was pulling at this point and barely slowed enough to make it through the turn - I went probably an inch onto the gravel, but only did so because I could use it and the pavement-gravel transition was smooth. Had it been a drop off I could've cut harder to stay on the pavement. However, I heard a wheel lock up and bounce behind me and I turned around just in time to see Kevin go straight into the guard rail and flip over it! While I was still watching in concern/shock I saw he was already on his feet, thank god! He definitely was going to be a little way back, but appeared to be well collected. Apparently he dropped his chain and shifted his handlebars - both pretty quick fixes. And he was 300-400 yards back, on his bike, and hauling ass to get back with myself and the Lehigh guy. I was pretty sure Kevin would be able to make a good effort and catch up, so I made sure to go as slow as possible. Every pull I took, I slowed the pace down. And sometimes I went to take a pull and very slowly decreased my speed so the Lehigh guy didn't notice. Eventually he started taking pulls as he may have thought that I was going to get dropped. But he signaled for me to pull, and I flat out said, "Dude, my teammate crashed and I want him back up here. So I'm not going to put in any work, go ahead and do what you please." So he pulled for a while, but didn't make any moves whatsoever. Shortly, Kevin caught back up - but was toast - as it was over a mile of him kicking it in pretty hard just to get back to us. I pulled for a little while to ensure Kevin some additional recovery. He came up by my side and I told him to tuck his ass in and recover. He didn't come up to take a pull though. He told me to go ahead and surge, that I'd cleanly have the win if I made a good move. I told him I was waiting for him to recover, but he insisted. So I jumped and put in a good 15 seconds of work, gaining 20m or so. Sat back down and kept the tempo up until I couldn't see Kevin and the Lehigh guy anymore as they were lost in the fog. At this point I was pretty sure I had the race in the bag, but made sure not to take it for granted. I continued to ride steadily and comfortable to and though the climb. At this point I started passing an absurd amount of riders from the D1 race, pretty surprisingly just blowing past them. Once I crested the peak - that was about 4.5 miles into my solo break. I just cruised the downhill, enjoying that I had the pace car tracing out my line for me. I hit 45.2MPH somewhere along the way, which is moving along quite good, but was comfortable every bit of the descent. Finally I came around to the last turn - a hard left about 600m from the finish. And figured I'd kick it in and enjoy putting in a solid finish. I cruised home easily to victory by a margin of 70 seconds, over my teammate Kevin, who recovered from his crash and surge - and dropped the Lehigh guy by one minute! Well done by him, for sure. Chris had a good race overall, especially consider climbing is not his forte, finishing 11th.

Now for the exciting race: my first Criterium ever. I was nervous for this race in the sense that I really didn't know how it worked except for off-hand accounts. I had never seen, nor been to, a crit before. So I was both very excited and a bit nervous. I had a lot on my side in that I had two solid teammates with me, some great tight riding work (Portland Velo Club rides, specifically the sprint at the end of the Saturday ride), and was sitting on a win from the day before against pretty much the same field. The course: 30min race, 1K, 6 turn (L,L,L,R,L,L), pretty flat, only one decent straightaway on the start/finish. Turn 1-2 was a little down-up, 2-3 was false flat, 3&4 were a tight S-turn, 4-5 was flat, 5-6 flat, then the slight downhill straightaway 6-1.

The Race: I wanted good position to start the race, so I made sure to get on the front line. I screwed this up when I didn't get my clip completely in, but only lost a few spots. I wanted to be 100% sure I would be within the top 10 the entirety of the race, regardless of pulls it required me to take. I settled in a lot better than I expected to. I took quite a lot of pulls during the race, but I never left my comfort zone - so I figured I'd have the gas to put a real strong effort in late race. I totaled 8-10 laps of pulling, which is WAYY too much had I been in any other race besides D's. The race moved along smoothly - a good chunk of the field got dropped due more to lack of comfort in tight quarters/cornering than actual skill. There were two primes: both of which the Army guy won, neither of which I worked for (although I made him work for the second one just to mess with him). There were no real solid attacks in the crit, but once or twice a few of us got 15m or so off the front and nothing came of it. Slowly the laps ticked away and despite pulling a lot, I was still feeling fresh with 10 to go and started thinking about when to make a move. I didn't want to do anything too early, so around 6 to go I started calling to Chris Jensen (my teammate) to come up and talk to me. I told him I wanted him up in the top 5 as I wanted to 1) give him good sprint position and 2) maybe break away with him. A couple of the guys in the race kept swinging in front of me just before turn 1, which ruined my attacking plan with 2 or 3 laps to go: I wanted to go HARD into and through turn 2, stand sprinting into 3, and take 3 & 4 extremely tight and hard. Then bust my ass to hold it. However, due to people jumping in front of me I had to resort to making my move on the last lap. Hamilton and RISD jumped in front of me going into the last lap, but I made a good turn on 1 and set myself up for 2. The typical line was to blow outside coming out of 2 to set up for 3. I noted this and cut hard into 2 (getting very tight on the wheel ahead/next to me) and just cranked out of the turn. This won me a solid inside position coming into 3, which I took at an uncomfortably fast and tough angle - this resulted in me going onto the 2-foot concrete gutter that separated pavement from curb. But was still in control. I settled and set up for 4. When I got through turn 4 I looked back and saw that I had a comfortable 20m+ lead. I kept the throttle down and comfortably had the win! Best part was, that despite getting pushed back on the later laps - Chris came out in third, thanks to his solid sprinting skills. Army took second - not surprising as he was notably strong in the field.

All in all - I absolutely love my first cycling race weekend. And now I really really want to do a stage race, especially if there is an ITT! The duathlon/triathlon season is now in session, but I hope to still get a few bike races in as they have been so enjoyable! Great job to Kevin Howard and Chris Jensen - going into races knowing your teammates are ready to kill it is a huge help and a massive boost to being comfortable and confident. And thanks to Drew Scoles and Ian Byrd for making sure I didn't get too worried about the minor details of races when it was most important to be confident and patient.

MIA: In more ways than one.

It's been about one month since I last updated, and I was trying to keep it at 1-2 updates per week. A few weeks ago I started to come down with a little something, and instead of just taking it easy and recovering (water, sleep, etc), which I did, I added on a great deal of mental lapse and apathy that led to a rough(er) week than it would have been. On the bright side, I'm back at it and feeling great again (physically and - more importantly - mentally!). That week also showed me how critical proper nutrition and diet are to good performance. In response to my poor decisions nutritionally, I decided to buy the book Sports Nutrition for Endurance Athletes by Monique Ryan. So far (~60 pages) it's a great tool and I just want to get all the way through it so I can utilize the knowledge from it as a whole. However, it has been great as a read and reference (i.e. after my 50 mile ride today, it was good to see what exactly I should do to replenish my fuel stores).

Back to that last week of March: Thursday I came down with 'something' - I wasn't throwing up or miserable, but my body completely tanked it. I literally struggled on an 8:30 pace 2 mile run Friday. That made it very clear that I should bail on the cycling races last weekend (last weekend of Spring Giros...kinda bummed as I threw $30 for 2 races instead of 8. Oh well, health is more important...I suppose). It took a bit to recover from that, but the runs the next week resulted in total leg cramping. Then I got frustrated and had some additional mental lapse. I finally got myself fully back together about 2 weeks ago, losing a good nearly month of quality training. I recovered enough to feel mediocre going into a race last weekend: Bloomfield, NY. Cat 5 (29 and under) Road Race, 22.5 miles (2x11.25mi loop). Mostly rolling hills, but these were nothing compared to the snow and 40MPH winds...which sucked, to put it bluntly (and truthfully). The weather was ugly and not enough people came out to the race, so the two Cat 5 groups raced together, but were scored separately.

Going into the race I felt in far worse overall fitness than I was 3 weeks before at that first Giros weekend. However, I tried to put thoughts of this behind me and focus on the fact that I should be excited to race - not disappointed in my own faults and poor preparation. I didn't have the comfort I normally do at higher effort levels. For what hills there were I could seriously feel the 12 pounds I had gained. Normally I can cruise up a hill with a good rise of the heart rate, which falls pretty quick so long as no one tries to move hard out of the hill. But that day, I was struggling up the hills (rare) and my legs weren't coming back under me (more rare). I sat in most of the first lap, and was fine staying in the lead pack. On the second lap I tried to get my body back into the zone to feel speed, by taking a couple pulls and testing the field on some hills. But this was to no avail. Normally it would shake out the legs and get my confidence rolling, but at Bloomfield it actually cut me down. Nevertheless, I put in all I could as we came down to a field sprint finish. People sprinted out of the corner up the last hill, which was a fairly steep and short one about 800m from the finish. I went, hard, and as I crested the hill felt completely crushed. There were two guys (1 was in the 30+, 1 in my group) off the front by 25m, then myself and another 30+ guy who was just ahead of me, then my teammate, Kevin Howard. We were met with 45MPH crosswinds and snow. At this point myself and the guy with me were trying to battle the winds more than each other (especially as we knew fighting for position would not affect our placings). I pushed really hard but nothing wanted to go. We gained on the two leaders, but only closed the gap to about 1 second, or a good 10+ meters. I finished seconds in the 29 and under category. I was pleased with the result, considering my weight gain and fitness - but there was no reason I shouldn't have won if I were in the shape I was in March. The winner (and of the 29 and under race) was a strong rider, but I had beat him in both Giros that I raced.

Needless to say, I'm now back on track and working hard. ECCC (Eastern Collegiate Cycling Conference) Championships were this weekend. Expect a race report mid-week. Races: TTT, RR, Crit.