Saturday - 1 mile swim race
I would never enter a swim race on my own accord, let's just start off by saying that! But Ahmed, my coach, wanted me to do it. But I'm glad I did b/c if there's anything I need more practice on it's open water swimming.
Before training with Ahmed I was maybe swimming 5000 yards/week. Now I swim at least 3 times a week, sometimes 4 all at about 3000 yards a pop. I know my stroke is improving, as well as my stamina, but there really is no substitute for the open water. I was reminded of this fact about 15min into the swim...
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I was completely gassed! Of course I started off too fast and just couldn't keep up the pace. I was forced to slow down so that I could take in more oxygen. The water got really choppy at about this point in time and that didn't help much either. But I managed to salvage a 32:57. Results here http://www.doitsports.com/newresults3/client/160331_193951_2007.html
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Sunday - Aquabike (1.2mile swim, 56mile bike)
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The thinking behind doing the aquabike was that it just wouldn't be smart for me to run in a race just yet. I still need to be conservative with the hip bursitis injury I suffered back in November 2006.
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What I didn't realize until today is that I probably shouldn't be racing "hard" on the bike yet either.
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The race started off great I thought. Took a turn for the worse, then ended up just OK.
Woke up at 4:30am and made sure I got about 500 calories in: oatmeal w/ yogurt, 1/2 bagel w/ peanut butter, 1/2 banana and about 4oz of soymilk. The only other nutrition I would take in before the actual race would be a gel and 2 salt tablets right before the swim start.
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Drove to race site in Las Colinas and felt relaxed. However I was a bit more nervous than Saturday, even though I had already swum the course the day before.
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The swim was great, I thought. I started all the way over to the right and sighted off Todd Luther for about the 1st 10-15min of the race. I kept him directly to my left. It's a good thing he was sighting ahead every 10 strokes because that meant I didn't have to. At about 15min into the swim, I started having to swim over the female wave that started 5 min ahead of us. This is where I lost Todd. I found some people to draft off of for part of the way, but never really found my rhythm like I had in the first little bit there. But I was still really pleased overall with the swim. Improvement from the previous day: 31:29! http://www.doitsports.com/newresults3/client/160332_194289_2007.html
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Got out of the water and let the wetsuit strippers (sounds dirty, huh?) take care of things!
Actually, it didn't work out all that well - as they were stripping my wetsuit off, it got stuck on my heels and then they started dragging me. I got up, wetsuit in hand, and realized I'd dropped my goggles a ways back. I need to have a plan for this next time, I wasn't happy with such a careless mistake.
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Hopped on the bike and off I went. I tried for the first time starting out with my shoes already attached to the pedals. I liked it. The first couple of minutes I just wanted to warm up and let my HR monitor start reading, but I soon realized that technology SUCKS! I hate it when things don't work like they're supposed to. My HR monitor never got a clear reading the entire race. I had to go entirely off of PE (perceived exertion), and let me just tell you I'm no good at that (please reference all my prior bonking experiences).
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So I have no idea that basically I'm racing at "hard" well beyond race pace when I'm supposed to be in training pace. All of this could have been avoided with a functional HR monitor! So what ended up happening was that my hip starting flaring up with intense pain about 30min in to the ride. I have rarely felt pain in my hip while cycling, so I thought it was strange. I attribute the pain to my pacing at the beginning of the bike leg. I went out way too hard. My hip was hurting terribly.
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I seriously thought I had re-injured the hip. At about the 50min mark, I took everything off the accelerator and started cooling down. I was going to DNF (did not finish). As soon as I got to the turn around I heard all the people cheering and didn't want to stop. And the 10min of cool-down peddling actually helped me. I went to a harder gear and the pain didn't seem as acute.
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So I took it easy and tried to stay in training pace for the remainder of the 2nd lap. The weird thing is that on the 3rd lap I picked up the pace again and the hip didn't hurt nearly as bad as the 1st lap. Maybe it just needed to warm-up more before I started hammering? Probably, but I know for sure I went out too hard. I learned that.
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Overall, I was a bit disappointed, but that's only because I know that I can do so much better than I showed today. I guess that's why we keep on racin', huh?
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Success is never final! (that's churchill, in case you were curious)
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