Big Kahuna Race Report

Before we jump into the race report, a few follow-up notes from the previous introductory post …

* First, on the “sunrise over the ocean” thing: Yes, I’m aware that the sun travels from east to west. But remember, the Monterey Bay is kidney-shaped, which – in addition to making it a pain in the butt to drive around – also screws up your sense of orientation if you’re not paying attention.

Santa Cruz sits at the northernmost point of the bay (click map at right to enlarge), and the beaches have a somewhat southeastern exposure; so while the sun doesn’t ascend directly over the water, the angle of those first rays of daybreak often paint a stunning palette of color – at least on the infrequent mornings that aren’t foggy, such as the day of the race. Consider this your Geography Channel tip of the day.

* Second, Girl 1 from that crazy porta-potty exchange reads my blog! Either that, or she got sent here by her friend who was a race spectator. In any case, how cool is that? And if you were wanting verification that I’m not just making this stuff up, go back and look at that comment box. She thought the whole thing was just as insane as I did.

Now, what would be really interesting is if Girl #2 is out there reading. Not necessarily in a “Hey, this might be cool” way - but more like a “I hope she doesn’t try something scary” way. On second thought … maybe we’re all better off not knowing.

* Lastly, and most disturbingly, is this: I feel like I should apologize for having toenail fungus ads on my sidebar yesterday. I guess that’s what you get when you let a Googlebot scroll your page content looking for keywords. I haven’t quite got the hang of this Google Ads deal – so if anyone knows how I can filter those types of things out, I’d love to hear it. And if you were inadvertently grossed out … hopefully you’ll never come across my little snot rocket tutorial from a few months ago.

So, where were we again? … Oh, that’s right – the race report!

**

“Fortune, fame, mirror vain – gone insane –
But the memory remains … “
- Metallica, “The Memory Remains”


Part 1: The Swim

No matter how many triathlons I do, the swim segment always seems like a huge wildcard in relation to the overall race. More specifically, I’ve never found a strong correlation between how much I’ve trained and the split time I post. Sometimes I’ll bust a fast split with minimal training, and other times I’ll do a high volume of training only to come out of the water unusually slow on race day.

This year was a good example, as I had more confidence in my swim than in any other segment, and felt very relaxed and strong in the water. I didn’t swerve too wildly, I drafted for long segments behind the folks who gradually passed me, and I overtook swimmers from previous wave starts in droves during the last half-mile or so. Then I got out of the water and saw that my split was almost three minutes slower than I thought it would be.

(For the record, this was a common topic of discussion after the race, as almost everybody complained that their times were slower than expected. The consensus at the race - and afterwards, in some blogs I’ve read - is that the course was probably too long. But as I was sprinting up the beach and peeling off my wetsuit, there was obviously no way for me to know that.)

The other illogical aspect of the triathlon swim is that even though it’s the segment of the shortest duration, it often sets the tone for the rest of the race. When I exit the water quicker or feeling stronger than anticipated, there’s definitely an adrenaline surge that carries over to the other two disciplines. In this case, when I knew I needed to gain a few minutes of cushion to make up for my lack of bike training, and then realized I was actually three minutes slower than usual … let’s just say I wasn’t whistling a happy tune on the run into T1.

Swim stats: 1.2 (?) miles in 32:39. Rank 22nd of 127 in age group.

Part 2: The Bike

Despite what I just wrote about the swim segment setting the tone, make no mistake – the bike segment is the defining portion of any triathlon. It’s also the portion I was least prepared for, which made me more than a little apprehensive as I clipped into the pedals and headed north on Highway 1.

I hadn’t taken very many pedal strokes before recalling a conversation with our running group on the Friday morning before the race:

Friend 1: Good luck this weekend! Do you feel ready for the triathlon?

Me: We’ll see. I’m not very confident about the bike segment – I don’t think my legs remember how to hammer like that.

Friend 2: I would think it’s like riding a bike …

(note: Friend 2 is extremely funny, and he's a good writer as well. I keep telling him to start a blog someday – if he ever does, I’ll let you know).

Me: That’s all the ride’s going to be: pure muscle memory.

Granted, that’s not much to depend on, but within a few miles of the bike course, I was delighted to find that the memory of hammering those pedals was still in my legs. Coincidentally, it was also around this time that the intro Metallica song started thumping through my head and stuck with me for most of the day. Before I knew it, I was cruising along at close to 20mph like I had been doing this kind of thing all summer long.

However, while I was happy that the muscle memory remained, I realized that it would only carry me so far before the reality of my limited training crashed down upon me. It was time to get strategic.

For most of the first half, I rode with a group of 5 or 6 other riders who were constantly passing and being re-passed, staying in close proximity but always swerving and staggering our positions relative to one another to avoid drafting (at least, that’s what I was doing – but I definitely saw some wheel-on-wheel situations at times. It's pretty hard not to when a group of six riders tries to share the same road shoulder.). They were riding at a faster pace than I could generate by myself, but I felt like I could maintain contact by working somewhat above my comfort zone. I think of it as “mental drafting” – the ability to ride faster just by seeing someone alongside you going equally fast - and for 20 miles or so, this plan worked great.

The Kahuna bike course is an out and back route along Highway 1 without significant elevation change from one end to the other, but the ocean winds tend to blow in your face on the way out, and behind you on the return. It was during the final eight miles to the turnaround point that I really started to feel the strain of an effort I wasn’t accustomed to, but I was doggedly determined to maintain contact with the group.

This was the decision point. The aggressive choice was to overexert myself and stay close until the turnaround, when the tailwind on the trip home would allow me to maintain my average speed - but my legs would probably be fried by the time I reached T2. If I stayed conservative and abandoned the group, I might lose more time struggling along by myself than I’d be able to make up with a stronger run.

You can guess which option I picked - and for the remainder of the bike segment, the strategy paid off pretty well. I maintained my cruising speed on the way back, even improving my average MPH over the final 20 miles after the group had essentially dissolved.

I realized, however, that the launch sequence for my legs to blow up had been activated several miles back … so it was only a matter of time before they exploded.

Bike stats: 56 miles in 2:39 – 21.0 mph average. Rank 31 in AG.

Part 3: The Run

I never told anyone, but my pre-race goal for this year was to try and sneak in under 5 hours. I knew I wouldn’t be able to PR, but going sub-5 would be pretty impressive under the circumstances. So when I rolled out of T2 with the race clock showing 3:20, a couple of thoughts crossed my mind:

1) If I run a 1:40 half-marathon, I can make it! And …
2) Why do these things always have to be so close?

Before the race, I had factored a realistic half-marathon time of 1:45, with an optimistic goal of 1:40 if I was feeling good. When I looked at my watch after T2, part of me was hoping to see an overall time that was either low enough to give a nice cushion, or high enough to give me no chance at breaking 5 hours. In either of those cases, I could have just cruised the run course without worrying about every mile split.

But since this is me we’re talking about ... there’s always reason for worry.

Since I was teetering along the line between “highest sustainable intensity” and breaking down like the Bluesmobile (it’s a long clip, but scroll forward to the 8:30 mark), I decided to take things mile by mile and reassess the situation along the way. My first two splits were in the 7:40ish range, which kept me close, but didn’t exactly build a huge sense of optimism about getting in under 5 hours.

I kept going along like this until mile 9, when I did some math, figured I had about 26 minutes to run 4.1 miles, and immediately thought … that’s just not gonna happen. It was a mild disappointment to realize the goal time was lost, but all things considered, I still felt happy with putting up one heck of a fight (especially for a guy with only eight toenails – that has to count for something, right?).

I downshifted into a more casual pace (probably 8:30s or so) to enjoy the last few miles of my last race of the year. To my surprise, I was still passing a lot of people in this stretch. I didn’t let it get to my head, though – in fact, it reminded me of the old joke where a snail gets mugged by two turtles; when the police come to interview the snail and ask him what happened, he says “Gosh, it’s hard to remember … everything happened so fast!”

In other words, everything’s relative. I was passing people, but it was only because I was further behind in the pack than I usually am, and there are a lot of slower runners back there. I was merely the turtle overtaking a lot of snails in the last 5K.

Ultimately I reached the pier and descended to the sand for the final third of a mile along the beach. It was one of those beautifully warm, unbelievably perfect late summer beach days, which drew a huge crowd of sunbathers and spectators and families (and, judging by the occasional smell of things, more than a few pot smokers – this is Santa Cruz, after all), who lined the course in growing numbers to cheer the weary runners home. I crossed the finish line, got my medal and my lei, and sat down in the shade of the Boardwalk to let the whole day soak in for a while.

Run stats: 13.1 miles in 1:45 – 8:04 average. Rank 35 in AG.

Overall stats: Finish time 5:04:46 – 96th of 850 overall, 28th of 127 in AG.


Part 4: Postmortem

As I’ve explained (too many times) before, usually when I come up just short of a time goal, I’ll mope and brood and second-guess my motivation and toughness during difficult stretches of the day. This time, to my delight, none of that really happened – primarily for a couple of reasons:

First - and most importantly – is that I really had a blast doing this race. Sometimes I forget just how fun triathlons can be. In the last post, I compared triathlon unfavorably to ultrarunning, but when it comes to adrenaline-pumping excitement, triathlons definitely rank higher than trail running. It’s like having that “descending the first major drop of a roller coaster” feeling in your chest and throat, only it lasts for (in this case) over five hours. This was really the first time all year I had felt that kind of rush, so a slower than usual performance certainly wasn’t going to dampen that feeling in any way.

(On a related note, since a few people have asked: yes, I'm going to write a post comparing ultrarunning and ironman training and racing. I hope to get to it in the next few weeks - but you know better than to expect a due date from me.)

Secondly, I know this sounds bizarre, but I was kind of glad that I wasn’t able to break five hours – because it might have diminished the accomplishment somewhat.

Think of it this way: If I had broken 5 hours here less than a month after running a 100-miler, with a grand total of three bike rides and zero speed training in the preceding six months – not to mention doing it all with just eight toenails – that wouldn’t say much for the 4:51 I did here two years ago, would it? Goals that come too easy don’t mean nearly as much as those you work your butt off to reach.

In that regard, triathlon - with the possible exception of a mismeasured swim segment here or there - is very much an honest sport: the results you reap are only those that you’ve spent the time to properly sow. The bottom line is that I didn’t deserve to go as fast as I wanted to – and I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Because on another day, things will be different – and I know from experience just how awesome that day will feel. In the meantime, this one felt pretty darn good as well.