This event has some significance for me, since last year the 2014 Long Beach Triathlon was my first race. So, I was very motivated to get a good performance in so I can see how much I have improved after being a triathlete for one year.
Pre-race
One nice thing about a race in Long Beach is that I can sleep in my own bed, and just drive to the race site in the morning. The transition area opened at 5:30am, and my goal was to be there in time to get a decent spot. Last year, I was a bit late and had a tough time finding a place to rack my bike. I was still a few minutes late this time (getting wife, 2 year old daughter, and dog out the door on time is a challenge). But, I still managed to find a spot on the very inside of one of the racks. There was a median between my rack and the next one, so I had a nice spot to lay out my gear where there would be almost no way other racers would accidentally interfere with it. I got my gear laid out, got my Garmin 910 and Edge 500 booted up, double checked that all my sensors (power meter, speed/cadence, HR) were reading, grabbed my swim gear, and headed out.
The swim start is a bit of a walk down the beach from the transition area. I remembered from last year that you could avoid the insanely long porta-potty lines (the race organizers rent way too few of these) by walking down and using the public restrooms just past the swim start. I did this, and it worked perfectly. Volunteers were also setting up an aid station near there, and let me grab some water. After that, I got my wetsuit on and headed down to the starting area. The water felt pretty nice. Not cold enough to give you that shock when you get in, but cool enough to where I felt comfortable in my wetsuit. I swam out to the first buoy and back as a warmup, then I headed up to the corral area to wait for the start.
Swim: 940 yards - 14:11 (last year's time ~17 minutes)
This race does what they call "swim stream" start, which basically means small waves are sent out every couple of minutes. A big mistake I made last year was getting too far back from the first wave. So, this time, I got close to the front. After about a 12 minute unexplained delay, we were finally off. I was towards the back of the first wave, which was fine with me. I know I can swim a decent 800 yard split, but no need to tangle with the hardcore swimmers. I had no problem finding clean water right away, and I was surprised to see that not only was I keeping up, but I was easily passing a few people. I settled in to my stroke easily, and was at the first buoy in what seemed like no time. Roka was a huge sponsor of the race, and for some reason chose to put Roka branded buoys on the course. The color of the buoys? Black. The rising sun was to our backs, so I honestly didn't have a hard time spotting buoys. I just thought it was a poor color choice. When I looked down the course to spot the next buoy, I noticed what I see at literally every triathlon I have done aside from Ironman St. George - people cutting the swim course. We are supposed to keep the buoys to our right, but of course dozens of people cut, keeping them to the left. Annoying, but whatever. After a few minutes, we reached the merge spot where the "super sprint" swimmers get onto the course. Suddenly there were a lot more swimmers around, but I still had no trouble finding space. This has to be the only race I have done where I never made contact with another swimmer. It was kinda nice. We finally rounded the last buoy before heading to the swim exit. And yes, once again, a steady stream of people cut that buoy as well. I started to kick a little harder, and got to the beach quickly. I wasn't too tired, but also not too rested (which has been a problem I have had in the past, not pushing hard enough on the swim).
T1: (4:42...that's about 3 minutes running up the beach, about 1:50 in T1)
A unique thing about this race is that you run quite a ways up the beach, through the sand before getting to T1, and they count the time it takes you to run this toward your swim time. This annoys me, so I actually counted it as my T1 time. It took me just under 3 minutes to run to T1. I was able to plant my butt on the curb of the median to make it easier to get my wetsuit over my calves and ankles. After that, I had my gear on, and bike un-racked very quickly. I chose not to do a flying mount, since the T1 exit is immediately uphill, and has very rough pavement. I was able to mount my bike quickly and was onto the bike course ready to fly.
Bike: 11.4 miles - 30:53 (last year's time 35:38)
I got out of the saddle and cranked my way uphill to the U-turn at the top of Shoreline Dr and Ocean. Once I made the turn, I dropped into my big ring and ramped up my speed. I was comfortably holding 25-26 mph on the flat and slightly downhill parts. I was surprised to see someone pass me in the first mile. But that was literally the only time it happened. I was ripping past other people with ease, and I wasn't pushing it too hard at all. Something went haywire with my HR monitor, as it wasn't registering on my Edge 500 or my 910. I didn't care though, because I know my power numbers and RPE well enough to ride this with knowing my heart rate. The course is fairly flat, except for the beginning, and when you go over the bridge to the Queen Mary. It is two laps, so you do the bridge climb (in both directions) two times. I was able to keep up enough speed over the bridge to stay in my aero bars, which i noticed nobody else doing. I continued passing people at will, and finished the first lap in about 14:50. I was excited by the fact that if I could duplicate that effort for the second lap, I might break 30 minutes on the bike. However, the second lap was made difficult by the sheer number of riders, most of them from later waves. I immediately found myself having to swerve to avoid people that didn't hold a straight line, and even had to slam on my brakes a couple of times. Keeping my power up was tough. I finally made it back to T2, and the chute leading to the dismount point was a mess. It seems a bunch of people got confused and were riding into T2 before realizing they had another lap to go. I probably killed 30-40 seconds just trying to coast that last couple hundred yards to dismount. The course officials were clueless. Even spectators were trying to yell to people to tell them where to go. Oh well, i was still pleased with my ride. A massive improvement over one year ago.
T2: (1m 42s)
Because of the mayhem getting off the bike, i also chose not to do the flying dismount. I came to a full stop, unclipped from my pedals, and did the clippity-clop run in my cycling shoes. I had no issues getting back to my spot. And I was very pleased to see my entire rack was empty. In fact, T1 was nearly empty. There were not very many people ahead of me! I quickly got my shoes on, grabbed my bib, and headed out to the run course.
Run: ~3.8 miles (27:32)
Ok, this is where things get confusing. The course is an out-and-back two loop run. I remember roughly where the turnaround was from last year, but I noticed as I approached it, nobody was there, and nobody was turning around. In fact, I was surprised to see that I was about 1.2 miles into the run, and hadn't even seen any of the leaders coming back yet. Was I this close to the front!?!? As it turns out, no, I wasn't. What happened was this: no course marshals went out to the turnaround, no chip mat was there, no aid station, nothing. So, those of us in the top 10% or so of the overall race just kept running. I finally saw the first semi-pro/elite or whatever they are coming back. But I still didn't see the turnaround. As I ran out, the fast people started to trickle back. I could hear one or two of them yelling as they ran by saying "it's un-marked!" which I immediately knew they meant the turnaround spot. Finally, I saw an area up ahead where a few people were turning around. A race official had ridden up there on his bike, and was standing there, waving people around to head back. I was trying to do math in my head and figure out how to gauge my pace. Do we still have a second loop to run? Is the finish line somewhere else this year? What's going on? I realized that even if I ran straight back to the transition area, I'd be covering about 4 miles instead of 3. I had to adjust my pace accordingly. My run has been my weak link for quite awhile, so I knew the pace I had set out to maintain would be fine for 3 miles, but not 4+ miles. To my dismay, when I got back to the place where the turnaround was last year, I could see that officials were there, preventing other participants from overrunning the course. So now, a bunch of people I was WAY ahead of, where getting to turn around to head back to the finish in front of me! I was able to pass quite a few, but I'm pretty sure plenty of people finished ahead of me clearly because they didn't run as far. Also, none of these people went back and ran the second loop, so I am sure they ran less than 3 miles, while I was running close to 4 (later I found that some people ran 4.7 or 4.8 miles, so I didn't even get the worst of it). I finally got close enough to the finish area to see there was nobody turning around for a second loop, so I mustered up what little speed I had left and pushed hard to the finish. I was bummed to see my overall time at 1 hour 20 minutes, because I knew when I started the run that i had a good shot at a 1:14 or 1:15. But also, my overall distance was over 16 miles... and if you add up the distances (including the whacky sand run after the swim) it should have been closer to 14.75 miles. I scrolled through the laps on my Garmin 910 since I had multisport mode on, and record run splits every mile and I could see that at lap 3 (which should have been where I finished) it said my overall time was 1 hour 10 minutes, which seems way too fast. So I actually don't know what my time would have been to compare to last year. I'm estimating maybe 1:15 or 1:16. At any rate, even running the extra mile or so, I was 8 minutes faster than last year.
TOTAL TIME: 1 hour, 20 minutes (last year's time: 1 hour, 29 minutes)
The preliminary results had me at 86th place overall, and 13th in my age group. I know this is erroneous, because there couldn't have been more than 30 or 40 people ahead of me by the time I turned around on the run, and maybe 3 or 4 people passed me coming back in to finish. There is no way to really know where I finished, but my best 'guess-timate' puts me in the top 50 overall, and top 10 in AG, and that's being conservative. Last year, I was 191st overall, and 30th in AG. So, needless to say, I have made some drastic improvements in one year.
(UPDATE: The officials adjusted my run time, bringing my overall time to 1 hour, 16 minutes - which places me 8th in AG and 57th overall.)
Lessons Learned:
The run course problems dominated what would have otherwise been a decent event. The race is run by a company called Pacific Sports, which also has several other local races like the LA Triathlon, and another one in Newport Beach. I think I am going to avoid events run by this company. They seem to have a ways to go in terms of knowing how to manage a race like this. I'm curious to see what they will do to rectify the mess from yesterday. They took down my information, along with several others who obviously overran the course, including the entire elite field. So, we'll see how they handle it.
Gear:
All of my equipment performed flawlessly, except for my HR monitor. I still have no idea why it crapped out on me, even though I tested it prior to the race start. It is quite new, so I know the battery is good. And I have raced with it before, including in salt water swims.
The other issue with gear was my Champion Systems PTC tri top. Once that thing was saturated with water and/or sweat, it became quite a hindrance. As much as I love flying PTC colors, I think I am going to retire that top. hopefully the newer one I ordered recently will fair better. I have an Orca 226 top and bottom, and they work infinitely better than my black PTC suit, so I know the issue isn't just my high sweat rate.
Thoughts:
So I've been doing this sport for a year now. I remember a little over a year ago deciding I wanted to give this sport a try. I was very unfit, weighed over 200lbs, could barely swim a stroke, etc. So after a year, I have successfully done sprint, olympic, and even Half-Ironman distances. I've become a decent open water swimmer, and quite fast on the bike. My running is actually not bad either, if you account for the serious injury I battled back from this year. And I managed to slim down a little, closer to 185 lbs now. So overall, it has been quite a transformation in 12 months going from where I was in July 2014, to where I am now. I'm excited to see what I can do in another year.
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| Hardware collected over my first year. |
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