Dang it’s been a long time since my last post. Good I only have a few followers, Ha! No special DocsMultisportLife moments. It all declined after the Gulf Coast 1/2 ironman. I started ramping up my bike volume nicely after finishing Boston. Unfortunately, a seemingly innocuous cold was actually a bacterial pneumonia. That brought all training to a crawl. Just proves you can get pneumonia at any age. I was off my game for most of May. I even began to fear that my Ironman Florida plans would be smashed.
What does a good month of training do for you? Well it arrested my wallowing in self pity. I banked 600+ miles on the bike in June and am now back on track and feeling good.
I had to skip a couple of previously scheduled races. But, I wasn’t going to miss the Wet Dog Triathlon. It’s our local race. Basically a mile from my house. It’s also holds bragging rights in our Tri Club for the highest finisher. Last year was an off year for me. I didn’t hit a groove until the last mile on the run. Needless to say, I was relishing the opportunity to hit the beach again.
I was on call the night before. Generally, I avoid scheduling races post-call. And this call proved to be a prime example. On Call Murphy’s Law dictates that if you desire a smooth night, the exact opposite will occur. The only way to prevent this is to have no expectations. You have to go all Zen on the call. Easily said, but difficult to attain.
The early part of the evening went smoothly. Planning to wake up 4-5ish the next morning to get ready, I went to bed early. It all went horribly wrong at 2:30am. The ER doc called me about a “very sick patient”. It appeared he really didn’t know what was going on with the guy. He gave me the above quote then promptly read the entire CT scan report to me verbatim. It became clear to me that the guy had a perforated bowel and needed a surgeon yesterday. Anyway, I told the doc to call a surgeon and I got up to come down to the hospital. Guess what, I get there, and I’m told the patient was transferred to Vanderbilt. No courtesy call. Yeah, On Call Murphy’s Law.
Good news was that at least I could get to the race. Since I was already up, I headed over to transition to set up. Everything went smoothly. I was able to get a good swim warm-up. Soon we were pounding away.
The swim was good. A little short for the 400meters advertised. My Garmin showed 400yards. I hit the beach in 6:00. After negotiating the congested turn buoy, I found some clear water and was able to draft behind and to the side of several people coming back in. A 40second run up back to transition got me onto my bike.
My plan on the bike was to pound it the whole way–pain cave. It’s only 9+ miles. It’s a flat out and back with just a couple of minor inclines. A bonus this year was that the city had just put down a fresh blacktop. Smooth and fast. My favorite. The legs felt strong through the entire ride. My Garmin dropped my power numbers unfortunately, but I knew I was in PR land as I hit the turn around in 11 mins. I kept pushing back to T2 and finished with a 22:09 over 9.3ish miles. I wish I had the power numbers to look at, but perhaps the lesson is to just bust these sprint triathlons by effort. I passed 5-6 riders on the course and thought I was in the top-ten. You never know with a staggered swim start though.
T2 was delayed briefly as I side-stepped a guy getting on his bike. The Wet Dog triathlon is a great local race but the organizers didn’t have enough bike racks and they don’t close transition prior to the race. As a result, late comers, put their bikes in front of all the racks. It’s a recurring pet-peeve. It’s usually newbies that don’t know triathlon transition area etiquette. Not their fault, though it is. The race director should police this. They could do a better job with the bike out/bike in area too. It’s too tight for most people. They need marshals slowing people down. There’s always someone who has a close-up with the pavement in this area.
Out on the run, the heat and humidity could be felt. The first 1.5 miles of the 5K course is on a running trail. It’s generally smooth but not as quick as the road. As I exited T2 I discovered my watch was stopped on my swim time, Doh! I tried to get it going but it was stuck in Multisport mode. So, no numbers to follow like the bike. I just grinned thinking about the series of events that got me to this point. My effort seemed steady but had no idea about my mile splits. I was encouraged by passing a couple of guys and was keeping a similar pace to a couple of other guys. Happy to see the finish line. Several bottles of water later, I was feeling good.
I was very pleased to finish in the top 5 overall. Better than I expected. First Masters too. Old guys can sometimes still bring it. Especially, with 4 hours of sleep and no watch/gps/power numbers. Maybe it explains why some pros train with power but race by feel. But don’t look for me to go without my powermeter numbers for Ironman Florida. Shorter races perhaps.
Sorry no pics. Totally wasn’t thinking about blog until later. I guess it has been a while since the last post.
Thanks for reading,
Doc
Docsmultisportlife 