Location: Ricmond, VA
Date: April 26, 2009
Placing: 14th Overall, 1st 45-49
Race Photos
Results: Click Here

Since it has been almost 2 months since my last race, I'll start with a bit of background on where I 'disappeared' to...

Well, if you had asked me 7 weeks ago if this was an impossible mission I would have said yes. I had been managing my recently-diagnosed asthma effectively through the Winter and was having some very hopeful early season success...until Spring suddenly appeared on March 7th and my lungs said "to hell if I'm breathing that stuff in". It was a rude awakening and it was hard enough for me to phathom - let alone explain to a doctor..."Yeah, last week I could run a 35-minute 10k and now I can't even break 41 mintues." Everyone just wanted to tell me that 41 minutes is great and "Oh, I have allergies, too". I have had 'allegies' since I was born and this was not simply 'allergies'. Allergies make my head feel terrrible and slow me down a few seconds not a few minutes. When your messing with something that has been your lifestyle for so long, well...let's just say it can be quite the emotional rollercoaster. I was already planning my retirement: coaching young budding triathletes from within my hermetically-sealed plastic bubble...

Well, nobody should just give up at the first sign of a fight. Things looked pretty bleak, but as far as I knew, this thing could leave as quickly as it showed up...and it did, sort of. Although I was slower - and I hacked and coughed a lot - I continued with my training. I only trained with Dan and my other teammates a couple of times since I was afraid to slow them down. I went back to training completely on my own for a while. Several events on my race calendar came and went; and so did a few rounds of drugs - nothing that seemed to really help. For four weeks I watched my swim, bike and run times stay consistently slower than my pre-March times, and not by a little bit. What used to be 6:00/mile pace was now a 7:00/mile pace. My 20-mile bike time trial was in the 46:00 range prior to March...now? 50-52:00. I did a 5-mile run with teammates one morning and nearly collapsed from the 7:26/mile pace. On April 4th, I went out to do a 6-mile tempo run followed by a 40-mile ride. I ran the 6-miles at 6:01 pace and then jumped on my bike and rode my road bike 38 miles at 21 mph with no problem. Since that moment, I have had good days and bad days. The difference is that a good day is a 6:00 pace and a bad day is a 6:10 pace. With 3 weeks until Nationals, I thought maybe I still had a shot...

For the first time ever, age has literally snuck up on me. The weeks leading up to this event, I told everyone that my age group wave started at 9:30. I even examined some of my competitors in the 40-44 age group. The problem is...this is no longer my age group. It wasn't until 2 days before the event that I realized I had been focusing on the wrong age group. According to the US Triathlon Association, I was now 45 years old - even though I won't actually hit that milestone for 7 more months. Since most races are not this big, I'm either looking to place 'overall' or as a 'master' (anyone over 40). With this being the National Championships - where winners are crowned in 5-year increments, I was forced to realize that I am racing as a 45-year-old now. In the end, I still consider myself to be competing against everyone and I'm fortunate enough to still be competitive against athletes half my age...but that won't last forever (especially if my body continues to fall apart). It's just funny that since this past weekend, it's really sunk in that I am nearly 45 years old and still pushing like I'm 25...

The Richmond venue is one of the best race venues ever as far as the start/finish and transition area. Check the photos for a couple of shots of the view above the transition area. Navigating the courses was a bit 'wacky' to say the least although they are pretty good for spectators. I made myself very familiar with the bike course with a pre-race ride on Saturday and was comfortable with it except for the anticipated traffic from other athletes on the course. The promoters tried to keep the amount of congestion down by sending off each age group in a different wave - each separated by 40 minutes. The 55+ athletes would start at 7:30am and the the under-30 athletes would eventually start at 11:30am. This plan seemed to work fairly well. My biggest concern was that I hadn't had time to check the run courses. When I did the world championships here in 2007, I remember the course going behind buildings, down pathways, etc. If you found yourself alone you might not have any idea which way to go. I just hoped the course was marked well. The BIG story of the day was Mother Nature. It was scheduled to be a record-setting 96 degrees!! As nasty as that sounded, I knew it might well be an advantage for my Texas upbringing.

As is our typical ritual the night before a longer event, Janis and I found a great place for pasta (Piccolo Italy). It was about a mile from the hotel and we walked there and back. The food was delicious and teh walk helped me stretch out a bit. When we got back to the hotel, I completed the ritual by writing out my detailed time estimate for Janis. This ritual began when Janis wanted to know how long she would have between seeing me each time at a race. She doesn't want to just 'sit there' if I'm going to be gone for 3 hours. Since then, this has also turned into a great lesson about how well you know your fitness and your body. I recommend it for everyone. Here's what I wrote on the paper I gave Janis:

Run1: 37:00
T1: 1:00
Bike: 57:00
T2: 1:00
Run2: 19:30
Total Time: 1:55:30

I felt like I was playing a bit conservative on my run based on my up and down times recently and aiming right on for my ride. As you will see, I was a bit mixed up on this. I knew that running would be my weak point and that my cycling - and my ability to 'recover' from one sport to the next - would be my strong points. With this in mind, I was prepared to go with my standard plan: push as hard as I have to on the first run so that the leader is within sight; even if it means over-extending myself. I know that no matter how hard I run, I can get on the bike and go. I would keep the pace really high on the bike leg to try and gain as much lead as possible (hopefully) and then back off a few miles from the bike finish and simply survive the second run and hold onto any advantage I might have.

Personally, I didn't care about the temperatures for the day, I would rather get a good night's sleep and race at 10 am in any condition than have to get up at 4 am for a start. As it was, it was already 80 degrees when my field of 86 athletes took off running. Jeff Terry - USAT's Master Duathlete of the Year a couple of years ago found me on the start line and struck up some conversation. This was good becuase I now had someone to gauge myself. Jeff was a stronger runner than cyclist so I thought I might keep an eye on that. We started with a short, steep downhill and I allowed myself to be boxed in a bit since we seemed to be moving well and nobody was out to make a challenge from the gun. I was a tad nervous to say the least - not knowing if my lungs were going to effect me at all. I was however glad to see that we had a cyling escort to keep us on the right path. Admitedly, I was only a half-mile into the race when I was already working hard and thinking that I might not be ready for this. Running hard hurts. Period. I can't make swimming hurt that much because I'm inefficient at it. I can't make cycling hurt that much becuase my body has been doing it longer than many of you have been alive and my brain just doesn't see it as pain. But running? Ouch. I quickly forgot about the effort when the group started to stretch a bit. I darted around some guys and into the 3rd position right behind Jeff Terry. We let another runner set the tempo and it was a couple of minutes later when I noticed that it was down to the 3 of us. I was definitely working hard as we slowly extended our lead. As we closed in on mile 3, Jeff started to come off the pace and I figured if this was hard for Jeff then I was in no position to try and keep up with the leader so I too let the leader go. A quarter-mile later, I pulled away from Jeff.

We hit a turnaround at 3.5 miles and I got to see a small gap between myself and Jeff and a moderate gap to the next group of 4 runners. I was already over-extending myself but kept pushing. What they tried to pass off as mile markers were easy to miss and I never saw any of the first 3. I passed mile 4 at 22:00 on the nose (5:30 pace), but could tell I was rapidly declining. The leader was really pulling away now but I still had a gap on my persuers. Just past mile 5, I was caught - not by Jeff Terry - but by another runner. I tried hard to keep the runner close by but the final quarter mile was all uphill and I felt like I came to nearly a complete stop. I made it to the transition area in 3rd place. My watch said I had run somewhere in the mid 35-minute range and it appeared that the 2 athletes ahead of me were about 1 minute and 30 seconds respectively.

Thank God I know myself really well. I had run a 10k at the same pace that I would if I had run it by itself (5:44 pace) but knew that getting on the bike would erase it all. And it did. One mile into the 24-mile ride, I gobbled up 2nd place. I saw him make a right turn at the bottom of a short steep hill. I could see him get out of his aerobars and brake. I took the turn full force in my aerobars at close to 30 mph. Less than a mile later, a similar incident occured. The leader was braking to take a turn and I went around him on his outside without missing a beat. I was flying. I had erased my deficit in just the first 2 miles of the ride and I was feeling awesome. I continued to pound away and I came around the first of three laps in a little under 19 minutes - right on schedule to turn a 57:00 time. I focused on catching every rider ahead of me. I know I hate the traffic of other riders but there's also an incredible adrenaline rush to weave through people at breakneck speeds. It's the closest to NASCAR you can get without being in the car.

My flurry of excitement dwindled a bit when I started to lose some power halfway through lap 2. I was still moving fairly well, but it seemed like I wasn't able to push the large gears I did on lap 1. I started to get a bit concerned but tried to hold myself together and focused on riding as efficiently as possible. To make matters a bit worse, I reached down for my water bottle filled with 'Perpetuem' to take a sip and as I squeezed the bottle, liquid came shooting out of the sides of the lid. Those who know me know that I am like a camel and that I race on very little liquid (not highly recommended - I just didn't know any better when I taught my body to do this years ago and so it adapted). I told myself before the event that I was going to force myself to drink and take in calories because of the extreme temperatures. Now I was trying to race down the road while trying to screw my water bottle cap on correctly. I had gotten a couple of gulps down before I gave up so I left it alone for now...my body now had a light layer of Perpetuem on it to go with the gobs of body glide and sunscreen. A tantilizing combination.

I was still feeling a power loss, but as I went through a turnaround point near mile 14, I noticed my gap had increased over my closest persuer. Good. My second loop time had dropped to over 20 minutes and I feared that I would feel terrible when I got off the bike so I just kept trying to be efficient - no over-exteding and no under-exteding. At mile 19, I slowly caught a rider who was age 42 (everyone's age is marked on their leg). While I was on my last lap, he was on his first since he started in the wave 40 minutes after me. As I passed him, he sped up a bit. Once I passed him, I could see with my peripheral vision over my shoulder that he was using me to pace him. He was not cheating by drafting me; instead he stayed a good distance behind me and off to the side, but he was definitely using me. I thought nothing of this at the time. At mile 20, I grabbed an energy GU from my pocket and squeezed it into my mouth...YUCK. the necessary evils of racing. When are then going to invent a liquid Snickers bar? I reached for my water bottle to wash it down and apparently, my attempts to tighten the lid earlier were not as successful as I had thought. The lid snapped off in my mouth this time and Perpetuem went everywhere. I had no choice but to quickly pour the contents out of the bottle, throw it back into the water bottle cage and stuff the cap in my pocket. Oh yeah, don't forget I still have a mouth full of GU.

With about 3 miles to go, I backed down a bit in preperation for transition and this is when the guy shadowing me passed me. As usual, I raced right up to the bike dismount line and scared the hell out of the official who was yelling at me to slow down. I slammed on my brakes, skidded to a stop about 6 inches in front of the line and quickly dismounted. My watch revealed that my ride took somewhere around an hour. Not good, I thought. I probably didn't even break the top 20 bike times with that ride...but I didn't have time to debate things in my head, I still had a 5k to run and a race to win. I threw on my shoes and my Rudys and off I went, not knowing how large a gap I had. I took off at a comfortable pace and decided that I would stay at a comfortable pace unless I had any indication that I was being chased. I actually felt pretty good and my fears of dying on the second run immediately disappeared. I went through several spots where I could see back for long stretches and nobody was coming. I went through a turnaround with a half-mile remaining and I saw second place - about a minute back. I knew I was safe and just kept a bit of pressure on to the line. Victory was mine. Yee Haaaaaa! By the end of the day, I had captured 14th overall and a National Championship in the men's 45-49 division.

Race Notes:
* Amazingly, with the way I felt, my bike time was 9th fastest and was less than a minute from being 2nd fastest. Yet my first run that I was so proud of was only the 40th best! I was happy that at age 45, I was only two and a half minutes from the top 3 overall which shows the competitiveness of the field.
* The mystery of the rider that shadowed me on the last lap turned out to be a bad story for me. It turns out that the rider in question was Jeff Miller. Jeff was 'Duathlete of the Year' a couple of years ago when he was 40! On this day, he was the only masters-aged athlete to beat me and it was a 30 second margin. In looking back now, I actually HELPED JEFF BEAT ME by pacing him. Arrrgh!
* Amidst the myriad of high-tech racing bikes, I once again raced on standard road-race clincher wheels, an aluminum frame and circa 1980 clip-on handlebars. It's all about your position on the bike.
* A part of me wishes that someone had been close enough to me to make me work more on the final 5k. There was nobody to push me and I settled for a 5k run that was slower than it could've and should've been.
* Congrats to teammate and training partner Dan Moss who took 3rd overall and 1st in the 25-29 age group. It's pretty cool looking at the list of National Champions and seeing 'Simpsonville, SC' in there twice. Team GoTriSports rocks!
* I was only 33 seconds off my pe-race estimate
* Next up: Lake Murray Sprint Tri.