The race gets a negative for hassle with registration. As the name suggests, held on Holloman AFB. The registration form was harder to find than the Loch Ness monster. I think these military installations stage these races as activities for the good men and women of their respective military services. My guess is that if you serve at HAFB registration would be simple but for those of us who track down these events, they are less than inviting. I only found the registration after triathlete extraordinaire Cody Hansen posted it on his blog. Multiple voice messages and emails to the RD went unanswered. When we showed up, at least 10 people were there who had registered, some of which even had fax confirmations, and were rebuffed with "sorry, you're not on the list." I think everybody that wanted to race got to race, but still you don't want to drive hundreds of miles at the ass crack of dawn only to be told "you're not on the list." Boo for registration.
That being said, the race itself was excellent. No swim which made me happy. I would promise to quit griping about the swim portion of these triathlons, but hey, it's my blog and I'll complain all I want. Stupid swim (grumble). The parking lot was muy intimidating. Only about 50 people there for event but no newbies to be seen - only little skinny athletic looking-bastards.
Run and bike were flat, flat, flat. Road was 85% smooth and the bumpy part wasn't that bad. Car pooled with world's nicest guy John Gardea. We left my house at 5 a.m. and arrived plenty early. Started out strong on the race and clocked 6:56 for first mile. Felt some hunger pangs right from the start so should've ate a little more. Went out with the pack of the pack with the fast guys and hung on til turn around. Time started to slip away and 2nd mile was 7:35. 3rd mile was tough and couldn't seem to step on the accelerator. Watched the fast guys (fast to me) slip away and struggled to 8:15 3rd mile. (Excuse alert!). Sick this week for first time in a long time and took it easy for 3 days to recover. Don't know if I had trained through it if that would've made a difference but I suspect it would - and I know Gretchen would say it would, so there's that.
Pretty quick transition for me at :55 seconds. Out on bike maintaining 20-22 pretty evenly. Got passed by one guy and I passed 3 on the way out. Bike was an out and back which I love because you get a good idea of where everybody is at the turnaround. I put 3 minutes on my erstwhile nemesis/good friend John Gardea and I was pushing hard on the bike for the first half so I figured I wouldn't see him for 3-4 minutes after the turnaround - wrong! Much to my surprise and chagrin, I saw John not 100-200 meters after the turn. Crap! I really, really pushed coming back in because I expected to see John whiz past me any second. I pushed so hard I passed another 4 people coming back in including super stud Cody Hansen with a little less than a mile to go. Cody looked like he was struggling a bit but, like the true competitor he is, he didn't take me passing him so well and immediately passed me back. The bike ends with a sharp right turn back into the transition area and after the nasty fall I took at MVT, I babied that last turn but sprinted to the finish after that with a bad case of John Gardea-itis. I finished ahead of John by 1:09.
Bike time was 52:23 for 18.8 miles average speed 21.6. The proof - http://connect.garmin.com/activity/79915393. John's bike split including transition was 51:25 so he made up 2 minutes on me on the bike which I barely held with my 3 minutes on him on the run. He told me afterwards that he was really busting it trying to catch me the whole way in so I'm extremely satisfied with my effort!
Got 1st place in Clydesdale with John a close second. The next Clyde was over 17 minutes behind me so I guess you could say John and I were in a class of our own in the fat boy division.
My boy Brooks Vandivort killed it and came in 3rd overall in a very, very fast field. Very impressive Brooks!
I've got no chance of catching John in the Southwest Challenge Series. Head to head, we're 2 and 2. I might could catch him if we did the same number of races the rest of the year but he has a head start b/c he did the Polar Bear and Jingle Bell Tris in December and took 1st in both so has a 20 point head start on me. Gretchen is telling me I need to be an age-grouper next year so I might not get me a fancy jacket for this year (award to the season winner). We'll see.
Next race is the Dog House Sprint in Lubbock on May 15th. My precious daughter's 9 year old birthday party is that day so I won't be leaving El Paso til late but race doesn't start until 9:50 so I should be able to get some rest. I'd give up the rest, however, to start a little earlier b/c it's going to be flipping hot! Swim is in Buffalo Springs Lake which means open water which means gulp! Funny thing is I went to law school for 3 years in Lubbock and never even knew they had a lake - guess I'm going to find out now. I'll post the race report to reflect on the carnage.
Monday, April 18, 2011
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Biking with the Big Boys
I've been doing rides in the Upper Valley of El Paso for about a year and a half now. There is this super fast group made up of extremely athletic people that just look fast standing still - you know the people I'm talking about. They just LOOK like triathletes. People like Bobby Gonzalez, Gretchen McElroy, Brent Crowley, etc. I've seen them in the parking lot but never got a good look at them on the bike b/c they'd just zoom by me. Well today my schedule called for me to ride the EP TriClub group ride that leaves at 8. The only guys there were guys that are even newer than me. We took off and were piddling along at 16-17 mph when we came up on this big group and, Gulp!, it was the fast guys. Included in the group were the aforementioned three godawful fast people, one of which is my coach. Gretchen said "Come on Rob" and so I did. In my mind, I was set up to ride maybe an hour and a half and go about 25 miles or so. I had no idea how far they were going but Gretchen said so off I went.
As a little background as mentioned in my last post, I crashed hard at the Mesilla Valley Triathlon, beat myself up pretty good, and sucked ass on the swim. My worst performance in the pool ever. So needless to say (although I just did anyway), my confidence wasn't that high.
I was tooling along with the group and we were going a pedestrian 20 mph or so and then we turned onto Highway 28 and whoom! Off we went. Turns out we were riding to La Mesa, home of the famous Chope's, some 21 miles from where we started. Much to my surprise and amazement, I hung on the fast people all the way out! In the last 3-4 miles, all that was left were me, Bobby, Gretchen and 2-3 others out of 15-20 that started. Way cool. We hit 29 mph and averaged 24 mph for that stretch. I had no idea I could do that. I had never hung with those guys for more than 1-2 miles at most. They probably viewed it as a normal training but it was monumental to me.
We hung out in La Mesa for maybe 5 minutes and then started heading back. I thought maybe I'll stick with them 5 miles or so and then I'll crack. Nope. Hung out with them to Gadsden and then started to crack - couldn't hang on the wheel and watched them recede into the distance. Then a truck with its hazards on came around me. It was a support truck for 3-4 kids that had latched onto the fast group on the way back. I found that if I got right behind that truck, I could hold 27-28 mph relatively easily. Within 3 miles, I caught up to the fast group again! I stuck with them all the way back after that and felt very proud when I pulled back into the starting point with the fast group. I stayed with them all the way!
Big day for yours truly. Just had to write about it. Next up is the Holloman Duathlon which is a 5K run and 30K bike. No swim! Yay! I have no idea how flat or hilly the course is since the good folks at Holloman are a reclusive bunch that post absolutely nothing about the race and apparently don't care if anybody registers or not judging by the difficulty I had trying to register for said race. I'll let you know how it goes since I need to redeem myself from the Mesilla Valley Triathlon.
As a little background as mentioned in my last post, I crashed hard at the Mesilla Valley Triathlon, beat myself up pretty good, and sucked ass on the swim. My worst performance in the pool ever. So needless to say (although I just did anyway), my confidence wasn't that high.
I was tooling along with the group and we were going a pedestrian 20 mph or so and then we turned onto Highway 28 and whoom! Off we went. Turns out we were riding to La Mesa, home of the famous Chope's, some 21 miles from where we started. Much to my surprise and amazement, I hung on the fast people all the way out! In the last 3-4 miles, all that was left were me, Bobby, Gretchen and 2-3 others out of 15-20 that started. Way cool. We hit 29 mph and averaged 24 mph for that stretch. I had no idea I could do that. I had never hung with those guys for more than 1-2 miles at most. They probably viewed it as a normal training but it was monumental to me.
We hung out in La Mesa for maybe 5 minutes and then started heading back. I thought maybe I'll stick with them 5 miles or so and then I'll crack. Nope. Hung out with them to Gadsden and then started to crack - couldn't hang on the wheel and watched them recede into the distance. Then a truck with its hazards on came around me. It was a support truck for 3-4 kids that had latched onto the fast group on the way back. I found that if I got right behind that truck, I could hold 27-28 mph relatively easily. Within 3 miles, I caught up to the fast group again! I stuck with them all the way back after that and felt very proud when I pulled back into the starting point with the fast group. I stayed with them all the way!
Big day for yours truly. Just had to write about it. Next up is the Holloman Duathlon which is a 5K run and 30K bike. No swim! Yay! I have no idea how flat or hilly the course is since the good folks at Holloman are a reclusive bunch that post absolutely nothing about the race and apparently don't care if anybody registers or not judging by the difficulty I had trying to register for said race. I'll let you know how it goes since I need to redeem myself from the Mesilla Valley Triathlon.
Monday, April 4, 2011
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
The good - aced the Sully Sprint Triathlon. Improved my time my 15 minutes from last year on exact same course for a 1:18. Won Clydesdale division comfortably and can genuinely say I pushed myself just right and was clicking. Everything was great. One word of advice - we stayed at the Maverick Inn which advertises itself as funky chic and charges $110 a night for a queen bed and room that would be $40 if it wasn't "funky chic." The room was ok, the people were nice and it's just across the street from Sul Ross. The problem was the flipping traffic and the damned Cousin Vinnie trains coming thru. I'm a very sound sleeper usually - got none at the Maverick Inn, just sayin'.
The Bad? The Mesiila Valley Triathlon raced yesterday. I'm a long way from getting cocky but I was getting a little more comfortable. Good crowd with about 200 people and pretty well organized. Lots of friends there. Cody showed up to race and pick up his award for the Southwest Challenge Series. The first person I ran into was John Gardea. John is my main competition in these contests in the big boy division. John passed me at the last in the President's Day and I bested him at the Sully Super Sprint. I use John as motivation to train and race harder but it's getting difficult because he's just about the nicest guy you'll ever meet.
The run was solid pacing off Cody. We traded places a few times but he was always there just behind me. I know this because you can hear him yelling to encourage lots of people. Another helluva nice guy. For guys that train as hard and invest so much time in personal improvement, triathletes are surprisingly a rather non-egotistical bunch. On to the bike where THE BAD comes in. Cody beat me out of transition (gotta work on that, the list is long), and then Scott Darling passed me too - that pissed me off and I went after him. So I'm hauling ass, down a hill, see Scott make a corner to the left ahead of me - doesn't look that bad. I hit that corner about 20 miles per hour and almost had it but caught the soft dirt and BAM! Down I went skidding across the pavement. My left hand had a hole in it the size of a quarter, scrapes lots of places, my only water bottle flew 20 feet away, twisted up my handlebars and my chain got all wedged into places it shouldn't have. I got up and a kid that was standing there helped me put my pieces back together. Took me at least 3-4 minutes to get the chain back on, etc.
I was hot, angry at myself, hurting and watching people zoom by me. I felt like the guy that's passing everybody on the freeway and then gets pulled over and has to watch helplessly as all those people he passed earlier go smirkingly by as the cop writes the ticket. I got back on and did my best. I was busting hard and felt like I passed 50 people on the rest of the bike but it was probably more like 20. Limped into transition but managed :42 seconds which is good for me. And then THE UGLY.
The swim was 500 meters in an outdoor 50 meter pool. I jumped in, took 2 strokes and had to stop because I couldn't breath. Goggles kept filling up with water. [insert your excuse here]. It was bad. All those people I passed on the bike seemingly passed my slow ass in the pool. I normally can swim 500 in 10 minutes with a medium to fast effort. Took me over 14 flipping minutes. I was embarrassed because Gretchen was there, my wife, my kids and my parents. It was not good.
Learning lessons - slow down for corners, I'm not in as good shape as I thought I was, don't get cocky, work on swimming, work on transitions, and try to smile more. Oh well, I'll get them next time.
The Bad? The Mesiila Valley Triathlon raced yesterday. I'm a long way from getting cocky but I was getting a little more comfortable. Good crowd with about 200 people and pretty well organized. Lots of friends there. Cody showed up to race and pick up his award for the Southwest Challenge Series. The first person I ran into was John Gardea. John is my main competition in these contests in the big boy division. John passed me at the last in the President's Day and I bested him at the Sully Super Sprint. I use John as motivation to train and race harder but it's getting difficult because he's just about the nicest guy you'll ever meet.
The run was solid pacing off Cody. We traded places a few times but he was always there just behind me. I know this because you can hear him yelling to encourage lots of people. Another helluva nice guy. For guys that train as hard and invest so much time in personal improvement, triathletes are surprisingly a rather non-egotistical bunch. On to the bike where THE BAD comes in. Cody beat me out of transition (gotta work on that, the list is long), and then Scott Darling passed me too - that pissed me off and I went after him. So I'm hauling ass, down a hill, see Scott make a corner to the left ahead of me - doesn't look that bad. I hit that corner about 20 miles per hour and almost had it but caught the soft dirt and BAM! Down I went skidding across the pavement. My left hand had a hole in it the size of a quarter, scrapes lots of places, my only water bottle flew 20 feet away, twisted up my handlebars and my chain got all wedged into places it shouldn't have. I got up and a kid that was standing there helped me put my pieces back together. Took me at least 3-4 minutes to get the chain back on, etc.
I was hot, angry at myself, hurting and watching people zoom by me. I felt like the guy that's passing everybody on the freeway and then gets pulled over and has to watch helplessly as all those people he passed earlier go smirkingly by as the cop writes the ticket. I got back on and did my best. I was busting hard and felt like I passed 50 people on the rest of the bike but it was probably more like 20. Limped into transition but managed :42 seconds which is good for me. And then THE UGLY.
The swim was 500 meters in an outdoor 50 meter pool. I jumped in, took 2 strokes and had to stop because I couldn't breath. Goggles kept filling up with water. [insert your excuse here]. It was bad. All those people I passed on the bike seemingly passed my slow ass in the pool. I normally can swim 500 in 10 minutes with a medium to fast effort. Took me over 14 flipping minutes. I was embarrassed because Gretchen was there, my wife, my kids and my parents. It was not good.
Learning lessons - slow down for corners, I'm not in as good shape as I thought I was, don't get cocky, work on swimming, work on transitions, and try to smile more. Oh well, I'll get them next time.
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