As many know, White Lake State Park is among my favorite locations that I’ve been to in the US. It’s simply gorgeous. Last year, I was considering participating in the Pitch Pine Challenge, but as I hadn’t been training for it and it’s proximity to Reach the Beach, I passed. This year, despite a new job and not training much since July 1st, a few friends and I decided it would be a fun late season triathlon. Since the Timberman 70.3, I hadn’t done much activity. And by little activity I mean two swims, two bike rides, and a handful of runs. Despite all this, I still finished 3rd in the age group (second if you remove the person who placed third overall in the race) and 17th overall. Splits are below.

Swim (0.9 Miles)	T1	Bike (26.1 Miles)	T2	Run (6.2 Miles)	Total
00:26:07	00:02:29	01:24:32	00:02:06	00:51:27	02:46:38

Read on for more.

Week Of

My fitness peaked a little too early this year as I let off the training gas right after my new job starting on July 1. So, I was in peak fitness around July 1. While I have lost a little fitness wise, I haven’t lost it all which is encouraging now that I’m getting back into a new routine. The week of this race I was in the Philadelphia, PA area on business. I was actually packed for the race on Labor Day as I knew I’d be flying in late the day before.

I’ve been to our office location in PA before, so I thought I’d just hit up the local YMCA (with the AWAY program) and get in two swims. I found it odd that I couldn’t find a pool schedule for this beautiful multi million dollar facility. Come to find out, they were in a deep pool cleaning and the pool was shut down. Ok, so there must be another Y around. The closest Y was 35 minutes away and had two pools. One was an indoor 25 meter pool and an outdoor 50 meter pool. Awesome! I’m game for the 50 meter. Come to find out, that pool was closed too. They closed it right after Labor Day. Oh well, we’ll wing the swim.

How It Went

Race Morning

This race was put on by Tri Tek Events. I’ve done several of their events and must say that despite many of these races being “small” there is excellent race execution, good post-race food, and the Race Director has more passion for the event than some of the athletes. They are simply awesome races, reasonable entrance fees, and great volunteers.

I live about an hour and a half away from the race venue. So, I was up at 4:45 and ate my pre-race bowl of oatmeal with a banana. I was heading out the door around 5:10 am, grabbed my coffee, and off I went. I was actually quite happy I had packed the week before as it made the night before so much less stressful. I woke up to a weather advisory on my phone indicating dense fog. The air temp was around 55 degrees and we knew the water was in the upper 70’s. This ought to be interesting.

When I arrived, I picked up my number with zero lines (the beauty of smaller races). But, as you can see above, the fog was so dense you couldn’t even see the lake from the beach. Uh oh. There were six buoys out there. Below is what this lake looks like on a clear day.

A funny little thing happened when setting up transition. A young woman (25-29 age group) was making her way through the racks asking people if they knew how to fix bikes. Everyone said no. She asked my friend Kevin who said she should talk to me. If you didn’t know, I worked in two bike shops as a teenager. So we put her bike up on an empty rack and start shifting. The bike wasn’t getting into the top two and bottom two gears. After loosening the barrel adjuster on her rear derailleur 8 times, it was shifting pretty crisply. There was WAY too much cable tension. Come to find out she not only won the women’s division outright, but was 5th overall with the 6th best overall bike split. Guess the bike worked well eh? Happy to help a fellow racer here.

The Swim

A few days before the race, the water temp was 78 degrees. It was looking like this would not be a wetsuit legal race. As I mentioned, I had been in a pool exactly twice in the month after Timberman. Both of those swims didn’t feel particularly good, so I was really not looking forward to the possibility that I wouldn’t be able to use my wetsuit. But, as a few days before dropped inches of rain and the temperature failed to crack 65 degrees, the water was 74 degrees on race day. WETSUIT LEGAL!

Normally, folks usually don’t put on wetsuits until 30 minutes before the race starts. However, since the air temp was in the 50’s, many of us had the wetsuits on 45 minutes before the scheduled start time of 8:45. We put them on for warmth…outside of the water. The start would be delayed an hour until the fog burned off. Many of us hung out in the water as it was warmer than the air. My friend Dan joked “Add in a boat cruising around generating waves and you’ve got one heck of a hot tub party.” Seriously, there were seven or eight of us (some Northeast Multisport members) hanging out in the water chatting. A few of us we were a bit worried as the air temp was in the 50’s. Last year the air temp was in the 40’s. We initially had concerns that we would be freezing getting on the bikes wet.

After Timberman, one of my lessons learned was ensuring I have proper body rotation in the water and be conscious of breathing on both sides as equally as I could. After the Timberman swim I exited the water with pulled muscles and a glute cramp. So this race I focused on a few things:

• Ensuring proper body rotation and not neck twisting
• Breath equally on both sides
• Relax the legs a bit while kicking
• Sight well
• Start slower, get heart rate up, then cruise

This was an in-water start. I prefer time trial style land starts for the reason that I have total control over how fast I go from the start and don’t have to fight much with “traffic”. The course ran counter clockwise. The sprint division had orange buoys with olympic being neon green. Note to race organizers, please don’t issue swim caps the same color as the buoys. Sometimes you thought you were headed to the buoy, but it was a racer.

The start wasn’t as chaotic as I expected but was slowed down a little bit as we were three or four rows deep. No worries since this kept my heart rate lower.

Sighting went pretty well as I had people on my left and my right for the first half of the course. On the second half things were spread out and I only saw one or two people to my left (inside). I used this as a frame of reference and swung in a bit to keep my track tighter. My form was a little sloppy, but I got it done. I had the 11th fastest swim of the day. Not bad considering my total lack of swimming the last month. I exited the water with no cramps and no neck soreness. Goals achieved!

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The Bike

Unlike the King Pine Triathlon which had carpets running up to transition, this triathlon had the carpets IN transition. Transition was setup on the beach. This meant we had to run up a coarse sand beach, over some wood chips, and into transition. I always wear socks so I spent some extra time getting the wetsuit off and trying to clean off my feet. I didn’t totally succeed as I felt a small pebble between my toes the whole bike leg.

Also unlike King Pine which had a bit more complicated bike leg (straight first lap, left second), this was a simple two lap section. I was wearing my new Mio Link and my primary goal was to get the heart rate down as fast as possible, get to know the first lap, and negative split the second lap. It took about 3 miles for the HR to recover. Looking at the data the Mio was putting out, my RPE felt exactly the way the HR was showing. Win for the Mio and happy to have no chest strap. My friend Dan passed me around mile 7.5.

There was really only one hill on the course and it was about a mile and a half long. This is where my lack of training showed. No worries, this race was for fun. After completing the first lap and knowing what to expect, I was happy to see my HR dropped. This allowed me to pick up the speed. I negative split the second lap by two and a half minutes and 1.1 mph faster average.

Bingo, goal accomplished. I was also happy to see my focus on cadence has become more consistent. Pretty much nailed the 90 rpm average. See orange block below. Doesn’t get much more consistent than that.

After the race and looking at the data, I noticed around mile 10, the HR drops off a bit. I’m not sure if this was me recovering or the Mio being a little loose. More below on the run.

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The Run

Coming in to T2, I had to get the stupid pebble out of my sock. I took a few extra seconds to pound a Clif Shot gel. The run course had two out and backs. We first ran through the campground (a place I can say I have camped). The course was very well marked with any potential off course turn being roped off. The sprint and olympic shared the same first half of the course and the first turnaround. The first half of the course was well shaded. The second half, was out in the open and got much warmer. Water stations were well placed, although there probably should have been one at the mile 2 & 5 area as well.

I noticed my heart rate dropping ever so slightly the second half of the course. It didn’t feel like the Mio was tight enough. I’m not sure if the bouncing while running moved it a little, but I tightened it one notch and the HR went up by 5-7 bpm. Ah, now RPE was matching the HR number.

Somewhere around halfway, my quads started feeling like a knife was being stabbed into them. I assumed this was lack of training or poor core strength, but despite all this, I ran pretty consistent splits and ended up with an average of 8:37 mile. I was also happy to see that my average cadence was 88 spm (improving). My friend Kevin passed me with two miles to go.

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What I Learned

Despite my limited amount of training, I was surprised by how much fitness I retained. Where I felt weaker was mostly due to form, core strength (or lack off), and simple lower training volume. The last two weeks had been filled with more runs than usual as I have Reach the Beach next week. Some key takeaways from this race and the three other races I did this year include:

• Bring the gel with me on the run to save 15-20 seconds in transition
• Try to not wear the headband on the bike and save 15 seconds putting it on in transition
• Keep working on the running form
• Focusing on body rotation in the water makes for a much better swim
• Consider getting fit on the bike
• Bring duct tape and not electrical tape for the number (electrical doesn’t stick to my frame)
• Work on building strength climbing on the bike. I can hammer flat and downhills, but get crushed on the ups

With that, thanks for reading. The 2015 triathlon season is now over for me. Time to start building for 2016!