Pro card punched? We’ll see… The entire goal of this race was to validate my USAT elite racing license to continue as a pro for another 2 years.
Travel: Possibly the smoothest trip out to the event. We left just before 4am for O’Hare and Sarah drove so I could relax and continue to let my body recover from a lot of fatigue I was carrying. Parking (thanks Drobs and Jen!), shuttle, TSA and flight were so smooth. No lost bags, car rental at the terminal and a short drive to our Airbnb. Also a big shout to John and Jess for letting us stay at their Airbnb in Boise. If you ever want to visit the area, 10/10 recommend their place.
Everything else from shakeouts to gear check went well. My only concern going into this race was the amount of fatigue I felt from my last big block of training. We did everything possible to recover well, and on race morning I finally felt ready to go.
Race morning: John and I drove to transition together and I went straight to the shuttle since I dropped my run gear off the day before. When I got to the swim start, I was shocked at how windy it was. I only had a long sleeve shirt and was quite cold while setting up my bike. I was told something about mountains and cold air masses causing it. Regardless, it was pretty crazy and unexpected. I then heard rumblings of them cancelling the swim due to conditions for the age groupers. Sure enough 10min before the start, we were told the course was modified to be 2 loops and only pros would swim.
Swim (29:30 - 33rd pro): One word for this swim, ROUGH. The way the waves were sloshing between the 2 piers felt like I was in a wave pool. They started us in-water just at the end of the piers and I opted to sit off the back and let everyone else go to war. I’m not sure how much this cost me, but I went out much more conservative than I normally do. Given the chop and how much I was shivering, I didn’t want to risk a repeat of Santa Cruz. The waves made it very hard to get into any sort of rhythm, and I constantly needed to swim slanted left with how they were pushing us. Going out was much harder than coming back. I was amongst a few other pros the entire swim, but I knew I was far off the front. When we came into the Aussie Exit, I was hoping the staff would say 1 loop was enough and to head to my bike. No luck and it was tough getting through that slosh between the docks. Overall, I felt “comfortable” effort-wise during the swim. That should have been my first que that my split would be slower than expected. I saw 29:XX on my watch as I came up the boat ramp, but did not have a concept for how far off the lead I was. Looking back at the tracker, I was 100s behind Ari Klau. The last 2 times we raced, I swam on his feet at both Arizona and Chattanooga and came out seconds behind.
T1 (2:30): This was actually a lot of fun with all of the age group athletes yelling and cheering us on while they were waiting to start their race. It felt efficient, and I was close to the other pros I came out of the water with.
Bike (2:07:45 - 36th pro): The bike was so different from any other course I had done before. On paper there isn’t much elevation, but every climb is pretty long. It is also point to point with a net loss of about 350 ft, which helps make it a bit faster. I got into my shoes quickly, but when I went to fasten them down I was hit by some massive wind gusts. The first ¼ mile is on top of what I’d call an aqueduct, and it was completely exposed. I had to wait until I started the first 300 ft descent before I could tighten them down. I thoroughly enjoyed going 40mph the first few miles until I hit that first climb. It was mostly tail wind, so it went by fast. I was caught by some other pros that I don’t normally see until the end of the bike. This was my first indicator that my swim was not very strong and my current position wasn’t great. Around mile 10 I got to see Sarah and Jess who yelled 6 and 8 minutes at me. I figured the 6 was for my swim deficit (which is a minute slower than I’d have liked). My power production at this point was good and only about 5W below what I was hoping for. After the next main climb, we made a turn back into the headwind for the first out and back. I saw the lead pro men with Sam Long already in 1st and started my timer. Before I got to the turnaround, the lead female pro (Hanne De Vet) came around me at mile 20. I was pretty shocked at the time, but less so now that I saw my swim was 4 minutes slower than hers. I asked the media moto if there were more, but they were still about 30s back. I dropped my power for a bit, hit the U-Turn and saw where the others were. I didn’t want to interfere with their race, so I just stayed back for the next 20ish miles. I did see another male pro draft off the media moto as much as he could, but I kept my space and waited to see if another would come around me. I checked back a few times to make sure I left a gap so they could slot in but they never caught up. I definitely got some unwanted media coverage feeling like I was in the way and possibly judged, but I felt like I did a really good job of not disrupting anything. We hit another turnaround and I saw the gap was still over 30s to the next female so I stayed where I was.
This section is already getting long, but I’m going to keep going. I knew with the long climbs and headwind sections that Hanne was much lighter and probably more aero than me. When she caught me earlier on, it was at the highest point on course into a headwind. Once it flattened out, it was pretty easy to stay there and I had to coast several times to stay out of her draft (saw this on the coverage too). It was around mile 40 that there was a short steep hill and I rolled into her draft zone. I figured at this point it was net downhill to the finish (after a few more shorter climbs), so I made the pass and kept the pressure on to try and not bring her with me (help her get further away from her chasers). At that point I was averaging around 260W and I pushed 305 for 10 minutes to open it up before a massive downhill where my weight could take over. I was expecting a strong headwind the final 10 miles, but it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. I ended at 264W average and 275NP for those interested. This was less than 20W off my power from a sprint tri I did the week prior.
T2 (1:34): No issues here and went as fast as I could push my bike. The lead female came in behind me and came out just ahead. This gave me a little more unwanted broadcast time as I had to pass her again as I opened up my run.
Run (1:17:30 - 16th pro): I wasn’t sure how this was going to go as it took the first few miles to find my legs. I was stoked to see back to back 5:55 miles as I wasn’t running very smoothly at first. Mile 3 I had to pee and slowed down to a 6:08, but from that point on I was highly motivated to try and break 4 hours. I was just under 3 hours total race time and quick math told me I needed to run sub 6 pace for the final 10 miles. The first loop was pretty much solo, but I started to pick off a few guys towards the end. Starting loop 2 I really used the crowd and passing more guys helped me lean in. Mile 7 was my fastest at 5:48 and I kept leaning in as much as I could. The most important part of the run came at mile 9 where Sarah told me Sam Long’s finishing time. I was really hoping he wasn’t there yet, but he went 3:32:25. My quick math told me I needed to be 3:57:??. I knew I was fighting to just break 4 and didn’t have another gear. My core temp had been at 106 degrees since starting the run, and I didn’t have much more to give. There were a few more highs where I felt like I could keep pushing, but also some lows where I was fighting to just maintain that 6min pace. I couldn’t tell if they aligned with taking gels or fluids, but I prioritized the aid stations best I could for that final 5K. I passed 4 more guys and I gave it everything I had to the finish line. To put this run in perspective, I held a faster pace here than I did in the sprint the previous weekend. I think that shows just how much fatigue I was carrying at the time.
Finish (3:58:48 - 26th pro): A bittersweet finish for me. I knew I finally broke 4 hours, but fell just short of validating my pro card. It felt like a half celebration coming across the line achieving 1 goal but not both. One caveat is that there are different ways to calculate that 12% difference, so there's still a chance I can submit the result and validate for the next 2 years.
No comments:
Post a Comment