Ruidoso Sprint

Great trip to Ruidoso! I redeemed myself from Dexter, all our good friends from the world of triathlon were there, and my kids got to participate and rocked the kids triathlon! Here's my two budding triathletes.

Cannon's 7 and Sarah's 10 and they're already better swimmers than I am. Ruidoso was a hard course for a kids tri (it killed me) and they rocked it!  Couldn't be prouder.

Nora and I and the kids spent the night at the host hotel the Holiday Inn Express. Sarah wanted to know if they had a train there (I think she equates Ruidoso with snow, Polar Express the movie, you can see her logic, right?). Took this pic and couldn't resist posting as well. I know there's some kind of law that nobody ever thinks your kids are as cute as you think they are, but my blog, my kids, my posts.

Anyway, the race weather was perfect. No wind, no clouds, moderate temps. I don't think there's a flat area anywhere in the village of Ruidoso. The only thing flat about the course was the swimming pool. I did the same race last year and apparently I have a very selective memory. Bobby Gonzalez, Gretchen McElroy and Brooks Vandivort are all much better triathletes than me but were all asking me how the run route was. Due to my selective memory and fact that I had averaged an 8:30 pace last year, I told them it wasn't bad at all. I was wrong.

They reversed the route this year to make it USAT compliant and twisted the end of the run around and it was tough, very tough. It was basically a trail run on a trail on which most people wouldn't even think of trying to run. I was satisfied with my effort though and due to the fact that they started us Clydesdales with the ladies, I was able to judge pretty well where I was. I tried to keep Gretchen in sight for as long as I could and after that I got passed by only 2 Clydes.

Smoked transition to my bike and hit the road. Nora said I looked like a completely different athlete from last year at this event - maybe because this year I didn't clip into my pedals at the start of the bike and immediately fall over! One lady did (sorry ma'am, I was there, know how it feels). Flying down the hill towards the road that runs to Inn of the Mountain Gods. Long, steady hill climb for 2-3 miles past the lake by the Inn and then the turnaround. I was looking for my main man John Gardea because I knew I was ahead of him but didn't know by how far.

I saw John hauling butt about 1-2 minutes after I made the turn. By this time I was going back down that long, long hill with the wind at my back and was flying. I was going so fast that when I hit a little pothole, my brand new aero bottle went flying (again!). For those of you keeping track, that's two races in two weeks and two aero bottles lost. Expensive hobby.

Anyway, I kept going as hard as I could. There were two Clydes in front of me that I knew and i passed one on the long climb heading back into the transition area. He was walking his bike up the hill. As far as I knew, there was only one clyde in front of me. I knew I probably couldn't catch him since my swim sucks but I figured I could stay ahead of John b/c his swim isn't any better than mine. I figured 2nd place would be awesome because they give out actual carved bears to the winners in the groups.

I got in the pool after a long ass run from the transition area to the pool across a side hill parking lot and street and across what can only be described as dorm-room carpet scraps laid end-to-end and into the pool. The pool swim requires you to swim up and down each lane 4 times, get out of the pool and be magic markered by a lady standing there, and then back into the pool for a repeat of the same. Then you take your happy self out of the pool and run across the aformentioned carpet samples to the finish line.

I was about 2 laps in when I saw John come in. I managed to keep those two lanes in between us the whole way and ran to the finish. I was happy with my effort and waited for the results.  After a while, I found out that I got 3rd in the Clydesdales. I knew about the one guy that was ahead of me but had no idea who else it could be because only two guys passed me during the run and I caught one of them.  Nobody and I mean nobody at all passed me on the bike so I was perplexed. But I was happy because I figured, I'm top 3, I get a cool bear!

Wrong! Epic fail on the race's part.  Apparently, the race decided that since they were giving out such cool finisher prizes, they would only give them to the top 2, instead of normal top 3. That means yours truly got a nice pat on the back from his friends and no stinking bear.  To top that off, Gretchen and Bobby rocked the course and up until the moment they called out awards (and even a little after in Gretchen's case) they didn't even show that either Bobby or Gretchen had even finished the race.

Oh, and I finally saw the guy that finished first in Clydesdale in 1:07. Looked about 19 and Nora said (and I agree) no way is that kid over 200 pounds. So for the record, those are Nora's sour grapes and not mine (but again I agree with her, as a good husband should). 2nd place was 1:17 and I was 1:20. 3rd out of 15 Clydes. I'm happy with that.

All in all a good race, a great weekend with my wife and kids and life is good. Bonus is that it should have been good training for my 3rd race in a row this weekend, the Chick-Fil-A tri in scenic Amarillo. I'm actually looking forward to this one as I've gotten emails this week from the run coordinator, the swim coordinator, the bike coordinator, and even the transition coordinator (didn't even know there was such a thing) telling me in exquisite detail everything about their respective realms.  They must put on one hell of a show.  I'll let you know.

Finishing Milkman

I was so fast, the clock burned out - not!

Milkman Triathlon 2011 - A humbling experience

Well run tri with wave start by age group. Arrived early on Friday before race and so Gretchen, Bobby and I drove the bike route to get a feel for it. The road felt rough sitting in a brand new Yukon so I knew it was going to be rattly.  

I did the Milkman last year and it was the hottest most miserable race in which I've competed. My time last year was 1:33 which for a 500 meter swim, 12.4 mile bike, and 5K run is pretty slow for me. I went to bed about 10 but couldn't get to sleep until about 1 a.m. so had lots of time to formulate how well I was going to do the next day. I told the race director at packet pick up that 1:15 was my goal. Sounded reasonable when I was standing between two legends - my coach and Bobby Gonzalez.  While I was trying to go to sleep, I thought I could do the 500 meters in about 10 minutes, bike less than 40 (only have to average 20 mph to do that), and counting quick transitions I could run the 5K in under 25 minutes and be golden. All those times are slow compared to my training. I just did a 550 yard swim time trial in 9:57 and my fastest 5K time is a little less than 21.  All these thoughts were racing in my tired head at the glamorous and luxurious Fairfield Inn in scenic Roswell (gotta love Marriott Rewards Points!)

Got up at 5:30 on race morning and this time didn't stop at a gas station to get a honey bun for breakfast (did that last year - one of my many excuses for the 1:33). My beautiful wife actually packed me breakfast stuff so I had a banana and some almond butter and a lara bar. Good to go!

Got sat up and my friend John Gardea was there and we wished each other luck, knowing that we had been chasing each other in 4 or 5 prior races. A lot of people were vacillating between wearing a wet suit or not. I had already made up my mind that I was going to wear mine even though the only one I have is full suit. The people that were wearing suits had on sleeveless. Water was 67 degrees and clear.

I started with my wave and felt much better than I did last year when I was uncomfortable and freaking about swimming "that far" in a lake. Came out of the water in 12:00. Oops, a little behind schedule but I figured I can make that up on the bike.

This is where it started to fall apart. I came out of the water before my good friend/competition John but I COULD NOT get the damn wetsuit off my feet! I know, I know, everybody said that would be a problem and I did practice taking the wet suit off.  Unfortunately, I just don't think you can simulate trying to get a wet suit off after swimming 500 meters being pushed around, digging seaweed off your face, and the general free for all that is the swim start of a triathlon.  I was so slow in transition, that John beat me out and was gone on the bike.

Felt good going out and was averaging well over 20 mph until I started climbing a hill that went up down and up for about 2 1/2 miles. I didn't even remember any hill climbing in last year's race but apparently I just blocked that out b/c they were definitely there and killed my speed to the 12-14 mph department. Gretchen started 5 minutes after me and passed me on the bike with first 4 miles. Also, the damn road was so bumpy, my fancy aero bottle bounced out from between my aero bars.  Thankfully they were handing out actual waters bottles that were blessedly cold at the half way turnaround on the bike.

I was trying to get John in my sights and saw him coming back when i was 1/2 mile from turnaround. Bobby passed me about 2 miles into the return trip.   I thought if I can just get close enough to John that I could see him starting his run when I'm coming in off the bike, I'd be able to catch him on the run.  He's a beast on the bike but I'm a lot faster than him on the run so I figured I could catch him if I saw him.  The ride back was hot and into a headwind.  Unfortunately for all my "catch John Gardea plans," I wrecked - again. Turning last corner to go back into the park area and all of sudden it was like my wheels were on ice and they just slid right from underneath me! I landed by sliding on my left side. Here's some photos

I'm proud to say I didn't stay down very long. I didn't even give the two guys that were standing at that particular corner to get to me. I just jumped back on my bike (no obvious damage this time), and kept going - and promptly fell at the next corner too. No new injuries that time but by this point, I was afraid to look. I just got back into transition area and put on my running shoes.

At least I thought they were running shoes, but apparently some jerk replaced my shoes with concrete replicas because I could not manager any better than 9:30 pace.  I don't know why, but the Dexter Milkman just kicks my ass for some reason.  My two worst performances last year was this race and the Eagle in the Sun and the only things those have in common is a swim start.

I faded worse in the last part of the run but managed to finish the run despite the blood, sweat and tears. Finished in 1:27 so that's 6 minutes better than last year but no where near what I thought I could do. Bad news John came in around 1:17 and kicked everybody's butt in the Clydesdale division, 7 minutes ahead of closest competitor. I was 4th out of 5.  Sucky, sucky, sucky. I have Ruidoso this weekend and Amarillo weekend after that so I need to get over my pity party pretty pronto.  I've trained well since I got over the double pneumonia but I don't think my fitness is near where it was. I'm going have to race my way back into shape!

the rest of my crew did aweome. Both Bobby and Gretchen were second overall and 1st in their age group. Brooks was top 15 in 2nd in his age group. I need some of their star power to start rubbing off on me!

Sickness and Future Plans

Just when I think no one's reading my musings, several people asked me where's my race report on the Dog House Sprint. Well, no race report because I didn't go. I call it the curse of saying "I never get sick." Took my assistants to lunch for administrative assistant's day and commented to one of my girls who gets sick a lot that exercise has helped me stay healthy. Famous last words being "I've never gotten sick since I started training for triathlons." 3 days later I sneezed and my wife, who is closely attuned to my every mannerism, said "are you getting sick?" I never get congested or need to use tissue. Suddenly I did.

Long story short, got double pneumonia and didn't train for week and a half. Started to feel better on May 14 and ran a little bit but didn't think I would be anywhere close to ready to go for an open water swim in 54 degree water so cancelled. Bummer. I learned from my friends Cody, John and Brooks that the weather was windy and cold in Lubbock so it's probably good I skipped it. Although I also found out there were no other Clydesdales entered into the Sprint and I would've taken first place just by showing up and finishing, but oh well.

I was still feeling bad enough that I skipped the Braden Aboud 5K on Sunday even though my wife and 2 of my kids did it.  It is one of my favorite races and the race that I broke through on last year and set a major PR.  I still felt sick enough that I didn't even resent or feel bad seeing all the happy racers around me. My hot ass wife even set a new PR of her own breaking 30 minutes for the first time! My 7 year old son and 10 year old daughter did awesome as well.

Next up for me will be the Milkman Triathlon in Dexter, NM on June 4, followed by the Ruidoso Tri on June 11, and then Chick-Fil-A tri in Amarillo on June 18.  Back to back to back. I should be in shape again by then. My overriding goal is to do well in the El Paso Tri in September. I put in a poor effort last year and want to redeem myself.

My run has held up well. I biked this morning and felt good. So hopefully, I didn't lose too much fitness. We'll see come June 4.

Holloman Duathlon

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.

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.

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.