First off, let me say that I am not dead. The cove swim on Friday was not the last workout I ever get to do. It was the first of the season where I went without my wetsuit though, and that was fantastic!
However, it was also the beginning of my pre-race plans totally unraveling. After the swim, I hung out with friends until insanely late, then I didn't sleep well that night at all. I got at most 4 hours of sleep, but probably more like 2-3. The next day I got up early to mentor for the TNT team. I cut my part of the workout WAY short, but then sat around in the sun for many hours, slowing getting sunburned and dehydrated. By the time I left the workout, I had to hurry to get down to SDI packet pickup in time. After I finished there, I ended up going to the OB street fair (which I had originally planned to not attend). Needless to say, this did not end up being the relaxing afternoon I had planned on. While there, I ran into Brad who bought me an Irish carbomb (Thanks Brad--even if it was the day before race day!) From there, I rushed to make the carb loading dinner I had planned and finally made it home for the first time that evening at around 10:00 and hadn't yet packed for the race. At this point, I was totally exhausted, but had to push through and get packed before going to bed. I finally made it to bed around 10:45 and managed to fall asleep pretty quickly, but with a 4:30 wakeup time, I wasn't able to sleep enough.
Race day, I wasn't feeling all that bad, but I was very tired. Everything went pretty smoothly as I setup my transition area. The only scary part is that I almost forgot to put on my timing chip. I'm really glad I noticed it on the ankle of the guy next to me. I'm gonna have to start practicing with that!
My swim went really well--I was trying to beat my 18:58 time from last year and I got out of the water at 17:13 according to my watch. That put me in a good mood! Then as I headed over to transition, I heard lots of people cheering for me. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure who all was there, but I heard my name a lot. THANK YOU EVERYONE! Knowing that you all were watching made me really hurry through transition and make it look good. :)
My bike also went really well. I passed quite a few people, but got passed by more people than I wanted. I wasn't really pushing as hard as I could have. My heartrate stayed around 81% and I didn't feel like pushing harder. I told myself at the time it was because I was saving myself for the run. I did manage to finish the bike in 53:51 according to my watch, which was 43 seconds than last year, so I was pretty happy about that too.
My plan was to really push until it hurt on the run, but once again, I couldn't get going like I wanted. I was planning to keep an 8:00 pace, but I did my first mile at 8:39 and went down from there. At this point, it was a totally mental game. I kept trying to push myself to go faster, but just didn't have the drive to do it. I kept coming up with all kinds of excuses:
I'm tired
My back hurts (I had strained it a bit on Friday)
I'm hungry (Didn't eat enough breakfast, then I didn't have any nutrition during the race at all)
I'm hot
This hurts
I did at least have enough drive left to keep myself running instead of walking. As people passed me, I tried to keep pace with them just like I did with Kim at Carlsbad half, but I just couldn't keep it up for long. The excuses kept getting to me. I did start to pass some people I knew though and once I passed them, I used that as motivation to keep going because I didn't want to pass someone I knew just to have them catch up with me again. (I won't embarrass said people by calling them out here, especially since I know how many people beat me! :)
Finally with a mile and a half to go, I remembered a video that Denner had just introduced me to:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obdd31Q9PqA
(Ugh--I really need to figure out how to embed things with this software--I know my posts are way too text heavy as it is...)
So for the rest of the race, I just concentrated on "Just do it." I was able to pick up my pace for a while, but then I kept falling back. In the end all I was able to do was increase my heartrate and respiration rate without actually going faster. With half a mile to go, a guy I'd been leapfrogging caught up to me again and told me to keep pace with him. I was able to keep up with him on the way in.
Crossing the finish line, I saw that my finish time was 2:11:13 which was 3:18 faster than my time from last year. My run was 1:02 faster than last year. I have to say, this really disappointed me because I've been doing a LOT more running and I thought I'd be able to beat last year's run by at least 5 minutes and I was hoping by 7 minutes.
I was even more disappointed to check the results and find myself at 64th place out of 102 in my AG. Once again, I had failed to make even the top 50% in my age group. I did perk up a little when I realized I was only 6:13 off from the top half of my AG though.
I know that I have only myself to blame for not meeting my goals. I
didn't follow my pre-race plan at all and that really affected my
performance. Then again, as Ann said, it's okay to be a "social
triathlete" too. And I certainly did have fun with all my weekend
activities that kept me me from sleeping all weekend. Certainly I
don't look too upset after the finish as this picture shows.
But then again, I am competitive enough that failing to meet my goals really bugs me. Guess I'll try the plan again next time. I now have two goals for my next race:
1. Do a 50 minute 10K
2. Finish in the top half of my AG.
I'll let you know how that goes. :)
However, it was also the beginning of my pre-race plans totally unraveling. After the swim, I hung out with friends until insanely late, then I didn't sleep well that night at all. I got at most 4 hours of sleep, but probably more like 2-3. The next day I got up early to mentor for the TNT team. I cut my part of the workout WAY short, but then sat around in the sun for many hours, slowing getting sunburned and dehydrated. By the time I left the workout, I had to hurry to get down to SDI packet pickup in time. After I finished there, I ended up going to the OB street fair (which I had originally planned to not attend). Needless to say, this did not end up being the relaxing afternoon I had planned on. While there, I ran into Brad who bought me an Irish carbomb (Thanks Brad--even if it was the day before race day!) From there, I rushed to make the carb loading dinner I had planned and finally made it home for the first time that evening at around 10:00 and hadn't yet packed for the race. At this point, I was totally exhausted, but had to push through and get packed before going to bed. I finally made it to bed around 10:45 and managed to fall asleep pretty quickly, but with a 4:30 wakeup time, I wasn't able to sleep enough.
Race day, I wasn't feeling all that bad, but I was very tired. Everything went pretty smoothly as I setup my transition area. The only scary part is that I almost forgot to put on my timing chip. I'm really glad I noticed it on the ankle of the guy next to me. I'm gonna have to start practicing with that!
My swim went really well--I was trying to beat my 18:58 time from last year and I got out of the water at 17:13 according to my watch. That put me in a good mood! Then as I headed over to transition, I heard lots of people cheering for me. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure who all was there, but I heard my name a lot. THANK YOU EVERYONE! Knowing that you all were watching made me really hurry through transition and make it look good. :)
My bike also went really well. I passed quite a few people, but got passed by more people than I wanted. I wasn't really pushing as hard as I could have. My heartrate stayed around 81% and I didn't feel like pushing harder. I told myself at the time it was because I was saving myself for the run. I did manage to finish the bike in 53:51 according to my watch, which was 43 seconds than last year, so I was pretty happy about that too.
My plan was to really push until it hurt on the run, but once again, I couldn't get going like I wanted. I was planning to keep an 8:00 pace, but I did my first mile at 8:39 and went down from there. At this point, it was a totally mental game. I kept trying to push myself to go faster, but just didn't have the drive to do it. I kept coming up with all kinds of excuses:
I'm tired
My back hurts (I had strained it a bit on Friday)
I'm hungry (Didn't eat enough breakfast, then I didn't have any nutrition during the race at all)
I'm hot
This hurts
I did at least have enough drive left to keep myself running instead of walking. As people passed me, I tried to keep pace with them just like I did with Kim at Carlsbad half, but I just couldn't keep it up for long. The excuses kept getting to me. I did start to pass some people I knew though and once I passed them, I used that as motivation to keep going because I didn't want to pass someone I knew just to have them catch up with me again. (I won't embarrass said people by calling them out here, especially since I know how many people beat me! :)
Finally with a mile and a half to go, I remembered a video that Denner had just introduced me to:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v
(Ugh--I really need to figure out how to embed things with this software--I know my posts are way too text heavy as it is...)
So for the rest of the race, I just concentrated on "Just do it." I was able to pick up my pace for a while, but then I kept falling back. In the end all I was able to do was increase my heartrate and respiration rate without actually going faster. With half a mile to go, a guy I'd been leapfrogging caught up to me again and told me to keep pace with him. I was able to keep up with him on the way in.
Crossing the finish line, I saw that my finish time was 2:11:13 which was 3:18 faster than my time from last year. My run was 1:02 faster than last year. I have to say, this really disappointed me because I've been doing a LOT more running and I thought I'd be able to beat last year's run by at least 5 minutes and I was hoping by 7 minutes.
I was even more disappointed to check the results and find myself at 64th place out of 102 in my AG. Once again, I had failed to make even the top 50% in my age group. I did perk up a little when I realized I was only 6:13 off from the top half of my AG though.
I know that I have only myself to blame for not meeting my goals. I
didn't follow my pre-race plan at all and that really affected my
performance. Then again, as Ann said, it's okay to be a "social
triathlete" too. And I certainly did have fun with all my weekend
activities that kept me me from sleeping all weekend. Certainly I
don't look too upset after the finish as this picture shows.But then again, I am competitive enough that failing to meet my goals really bugs me. Guess I'll try the plan again next time. I now have two goals for my next race:
1. Do a 50 minute 10K
2. Finish in the top half of my AG.
I'll let you know how that goes. :)
4 Comments
Good job Brian! You can sleep when you're dead . . .
Dude, just throw the gauntlet already. Call 'em out. Says the shuffling dude you ran past during mile what, 4? 3? I dunno.
My goal is to not be in your age group....how can we make that happen?
dear brian,
how do you expect me to stay abreast of your comings and goings if you fail to regularly update your blog?
hearts and flowers,
ann marie