Richard B Russel Race Review

I love racing. Racing is why I train. Racing makes me happy. I have always been a racer and most of the time racing is my motivation to get out the door. I love the prep time you put into getting ready for a race. I love the excitement in the air on race days and it's one of the few times that I am happy to wake up early.... well sometimes. This race was 2.5 hours away and since it started at 7:30am I had to get up at 3:30am, which I would have to say is one of those hours in the day that I don't see too often.

The day before my race coach shanks and I went over my race strategy. As always, I set an impressive goal of cutting 17 minutes of my time from last year and shanks being the coach tried to reel me back into reality. I caught a pretty nasty head cold from my brother in-law the weekend before my race and consequently missed all my following workouts that weekend and all but 2 workouts leading up to my race on Saturday. Needless to say I wasn't in my peak performance condition. After talking it out with him he set the goal of cutting between 5 to 8 minutes, but more importantly to maintain a heart rate zone of zone 4. I have always struggled with the idea of subjective goals (goals that are based on what you perceive). These are almost to froo-froo for me. Things like push yourself for the entire race, and race in the red zone. I don't mind subjective goals for my training and I often use them, but to me races should be a measure of what you have accomplished and the only way to really convince me I have accomplished anything is to put an objective (a measurable outcome independent of any influencing perspective) finding in front of me. I like to see numbers and set goals with numbers, so knowing this my coach put forth the somewhat subjective goal of maintaining a zone 4 hear rate. Especially after my post from last week I know I need to work on just enjoying the race more and relishing the fact that I tried my hardest, so I was willing to meet my coach half way with this new goal.

We also talked about nutrition. Since this was an Olympic triathlon ( 1500m swim, 22 mile bike, and 6.25 mile run) we knew nutrition would play a larger role and we decided to try 300 calories on the bike and a bottle with nuun on the run. On the bike I've been using EFS which not only has a lot of calories, but also has a good amount of potassium and sodium. Since it's so hot (and humid) here in Ga and I sweat a lot, so I need all of those electrolytes. I've never used an electrolyte drink on the run so we decided to see how it would go since the half ironman I'm doing in October means those electrolytes will be needed on the run. With all the details hashed out I was feeling great about my race the next day, except the one last instruction he gave me... no beer that night... *sigh* bummer.

3:30am

3:30am

3:30am

Man do I hate mornings. The alarm went off and I would have to say if I hadn't spent $80 to do this race I would have gone back to sleep. The drive wasn't as bad as I thought it would be and I was at the park before I realized it. I find my spot in transition, set up all my gear, got harassed by shanks for not being a morning person, and then head down to the swim start to do a warm up.



The swim was two 750m laps and since I did this race last year I knew to watch out for the start of the second lap. The first lap ends on shore and you have to run about 10-15 yards to the start of the second lap, which wouldn't seem like a big deal but man does it spike your heart rate. As we started the second lap a racer near me sprint the 10-15 yards as fast as possible and then dove in hoping to gain a few seconds on the rest of us. As I took the start of the second lap a little slower I noticed that the boisterous racer had lost his momentum and slowly fell back as he tried to recover from his earlier efforts. As we ended the swim I was feeling pretty well about the race so far and I was excited about my bike leg. I had a great transition and didn't lose either of my shoes while getting on the bike, which recently seems to be a great achievement for me. The bike leg went great! I felt like I was making up time that I lost in the swim and I was following my nutrition plan to the letter. I felt so great that I didn't even pay attention to my heart rate (which was zone 5 the whole time) and I payed for it on the run. I suffered on the run. I felt like I was in purgatory the whole time. There weren't any other racers near me so I started to lose my luster and started to feel less like I was racing and more like I was training. I also had forgotten my socks and despite the excessive amounts of body glide I put in my shoes I was getting some really nasty blisters on my feet. I followed my nutrition plan on the run and while it didn't have a negative effect I didn't feel like it had any benefits. Though I guess the fact that there weren't any negative effects is a benefit.

I crossed the finish line at 2:45:47 and was actually happy with my results. I had cut 3 minutes off my time from last year and even though this wasn't the 17 minutes I wanted or even the more achievable 8 minutes shanks predicted it was still an improvement. After being sick for 5 days, having some pretty nasty blisters, and losing some motivation during the run I had a pretty good race. My average heart rate was zone 4 and if I had done better on the run I would have made huge improvements. I cut 2 minutes off my swim, 3 minutes off my bike, but my run took 2 minutes longer. One of the great things I learned from this race was that I need to work on saving just a little more for the run. I may have put to much into the bike and I paid for it during the run. I also learned that even though I didn't reach my objective goals I was able to have fun and could be proud of what I was able to do.

Oh but wait I did learn one more thing after this race... Coach shanks is a hypocrite!

That's right photographic evidence of Coach Shanks drinking a beer. Oh facebook, why do I love you so? Because you gave me proof that I can have a pre-race beer again!