Ironstar Race Report

Last weekend, I did the Ironstar Triathlon in Galveston, TX. It's the first race of the Texas Tri Series. It was also my first race since Ironman Florida so it's been about 5 months since my last race. I was taking a very relaxed approached to this race.

I drove down the day before the race. The weather was very nasty and rained about half the drive. That prevented me from getting my prerace workouts in. For lunch, I met with some people that I know from Slowtwitch and we met at Mosquito Cafe which was very, very good and I highly recommend this place to anyone. I wish they had this place in Austin and that's saying a lot. I just chilled out all day long, ate a lot at the pasta dinner that night, and actually went to bed pretty early. I actually got 8 hours of decent sleep the night before the race which is a first for me.

Got up the next day and had a bagel, peanut butter, yogurt, apple, Gatorade, and water. I also did my usual 3 RP's in the morning with 2 at the hotel room. I was still pretty calm most of the time. I got a little nervous, but I think the prerace jitters are fading as I become more of a veteran triathlete. I did a warmup swim which was the first workout in 3 days. Instead of giving the results at the end of this report, I'll give them to you know. BTW, this is a quarter Iron (965m swim, 28mile bike, 6.5mile run) so not quite an Olympic distance race.

Event - Time - Pace - Age Group Place - Overall Place
Swim - 19:01 - 1:58/100m - 5th - 82nd
T1 - 01:38 - N/A - 4th - N/A
Bike - 1:22:29 - 20.4mph - 6th - 84th
T2 - 01:13 - N/A - 10th - N/A
Run - 49:32 - 7:37min/mile - 10th - 110th
Overall - 2:33:56 - N/A - 6th - 74th

The Swim:
The gun went off and I thought I was going to get kicked in the nuts. I was jockeying for position and kept hitting other guys just treading water. However, no crotch kickage occurred and I was really happy about that. The first leg of the swim wasn't that rough, but I felt like I was getting off course a lot. I remembered my coaches training and tried to hop on someone's feet to draft off of. Well, I found some feet and these feet also knew that I found them. Every time I would touch them, they would start kicking and thrashing a lot trying to get me off the feet. I quickly recognized this and I started having some fun. About every 10 seconds, I would "Boop!" and touch the feet and the feet would begin kicking and thrashing again. I was quite amused with this for some reason. This guy was trying to get my off his feet, but all that it did was to make a lot more bubbles to make it easier to follow him and to waste energy kicking. It was fun for awhile but this guy would stop and look up to sight every few minutes. I decided to swim on my own and found another set of feet. I was on those feet for awhile but that guy also would stop swimming and look up to sight. This again, made me realize how good my coaches are and teaching us how to swim and sight at the same time. I would swim and look up just enough to get my eyes above the water to see the big orange buoys. It saved me from starting and stopping and just made it more efficient to swim. I was by myself for awhile and I saw some guys about 5m to the right swimming in a line. I tried to get over there but I thought they were too far off the buoy line so I decided to just go on my own. Well, that last guy that I was drafting off of got on my feet. Eh, nothing I can do really about that so I just kept swimming. I turned the last buoy and headed towards the swim exit. I picked up the pace a bit trying to get out of the water. I breathed on the right side about 80% of the time because that's just what felt comfortable this race. I felt like I had a pretty good swim. I was very relaxed and actually drafted off of people on the swim. I checked my time and I thought it was a little slow. I think the course was long especially considering that with my slow swim time, I still placed pretty high in my age group on the swim. I'm happy with my swim.

T1:
I had a pretty good T1. Very quick and I don't think I could have done much better. I had my shoes on my bike so I put on my sunglasses, my helmet, grabbed my bike and then I was off. I really like this T area because I call it a fair transition area. The swim in and the bike out are on the exact opposite corners so everyone has to go an equal distance through transition. I crossed the line and was on the bike.

Bike:
I pretty much stopped right and had to put my bike in the correct gear. I had it in the big chainring and that is something I forgot to do before the race started. I had some problems with getting my feet in my shoes and they were annoying me for about 1.5 miles. We got out of Moody Gardens and it was just a wall of wind. Not cool at all. A straight headwind for the next 13 miles wasn't fun. Felt like I was peddling in mud. The volunteers were great and the course was well marked. Not much to say about riding into the wind for 13 miles. My usual lower left back problems started up again and it wasn't fun. I drank 1 bottle of fluid going out and grabbed a bottle of Gatorade Endurance before the turn around. I turned around and I don't think I got under 25mph the entire way back. The tail wind was fun. Only problems that I had were the lower back problems which caused me to get out of aero a few times. I really need to figure out what the hell is going on with that. I came into the mount line and did my usual flying dismount. I really like it because it's fast and efficient. What I do is take out my feet from my shoes about a mile out so that I'm pedaling with my feet on top of my shoes. As I'm approaching the dismount line, I take my right leg and cross it over the top of my top tube. I put my right leg between my left leg and the bike frame. I usually lean the bike to the right give my right leg more space. I come in hard and fast and slow down just before the mount line. I usually slow down to an acceptable running pace so my right foot hits the ground and then I start running with my bike. This time, it felt like I was going to collapse though because my legs felt like jelly. Oh, I remember that feel now. Not fun. Oh, biking in a wet bike jersey isn't fun and I really need to get a Texas Iron tri jersey.

T2:
I took my time in T2. I didn't have speed laces on so I had to tie my shoes. Before that, I actually sat down to put on my socks. I just needed to do it because I was going to fumble with my socks for awhile standing up otherwise. I grabbed my hat, race belt, a bottle of fluids, and Gus and ran out of T2. Once again, I have a very simle T2 set up. When I was setting up in the morning, Eric Gilmore and I both noticed that we have minimal set ups compared to others. The common denominator here is that both of us are coached by Texas Iron. Hmmm, don't you find that interesting.

The Run:
I was now on the run. It hurt at first and I walked a bit as usual. I had 2 Gus in the back of my jersey and I threw them away because they were annoying me. I still had 2 more in the pockets of my shorts so I was good to go. Oh, I also threw in a small tube of Sports Slick shorts as well and that really paid off. My right arm and back was chafing so I put that on to help out. Also, I was getting chafed nipples and the Sports Slick helped. I get going but as usual, I had a ton of people passing me the entire time. It took me about 2 miles to feel like I was in a groove and getting comfortable, but I still put on my rally cap (upside down and to the side) though because I felt like I really needed it. After that, fewer people passed me. I kept plodding along and walked only 3 times for a total of 25 seconds the last 4.5 miles. Nothing really special. The course was really twisty which kept it interesting, but you really couldn't tell how far you were going. Volunteers were great. About the last mile or so, I picked up the pace and I actually passed one or two people shockingly. The last 400yards was close to a sprint as I could manage and I crossed the finish line. Total time was 49:32 for a pace of 7:37. That's a lot faster than I thought I could run so the course was either short or I had a really, really good day. It felt like I was running 9:00min/mile but that race is actually a PR pace for me for around a 10k race. Not bad.

I was done with the race with a time of 2:33:56. Not bad at all and I felt pretty good. I could've pushed a bit harder on everything, especially the run, but it's the first race of the season and I have a bit to work on. It was a good race and I'm not that disappointed with it. It was just a race to knock off the cobwebs. Now, I need to get my butt in gear and start training hard again.

Shoe milage: 282 miles