This was my first Olympic-length
triathlon (aka international distance).
PART 1.
First segment (1.5K open
water swim) went well. The swim was in the Allegheny River as it flows downtown
past Heinz Field and PNC Park. We entered between the two stadiums and swam
directly upstream to the Clemente Bridge. Then at a yellow buoy, we turned 90
degrees and swam to another buoy halfway across the river. Then we swam
downstream past the entry point and on to Heinz Field. I did a similar swim
course a couple weeks ago, but today's race was very different. First, there
were 135 men in my heat (crowded!). We all piled into the water, treaded water
for a few minutes behind the start buoy, and started swimming after a
countdown. Obviously there were lots of inadvertent contacts with other
swimmers, and I felt trapped by not being able to pass people ahead of me while
at the same time being bumped by people behind me. I suppose I could have been
more aggressive by squeezing in between bodies, but the underwater visibility
was zero and I had no idea what was ahead of the people I wanted to pass. One
good thing about this race was that orientation was made easier by where the
rising sun happened to be. We couldn't see the buoys marking the course, but if
we swam toward the sun, we'd be heading in the right direction. The second thing
that made this swim different from my last was the roughness of the water. A
couple weeks ago, this river was as lazy and flat as a pond or pool. Today
(after heavy rain all week), the water was more rough, and the current much
stronger (16-fold increase in cubic feet per second). There was also a fair
amount of flood debris. I'm making this sound bad, but it wasn't really. The
water was still warm (78 degrees) and I swam at a speed comparable to my times
in a pool.
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| Exiting the water after a 1.5 K swim. |
There were two instances where I
almost got off course. First, I was swimming a little farther in the middle of
the river than I should have, and I nearly missed a buoy. Swimmers were
supposed to keep all buoys to his or her right, and I was nearly upon a buoy
when a kayaker patrolling the race yelled at me. I couldn't hear what she was
saying, but it was enough for me to look up and see that I needed to make a
quick adjustment to my swimming direction to stay to the right of the buoy. I
made a similar mistake a little later, as well. The buoy was marking a
90-degree turn and I cut off the corner. Realizing my mistake, I turned around
and headed back toward the buoy so I could round it on the correct side. No
race officials seemed to be nearby, so no one would have known. But I would
have, and I didn't want to cheat.
Overall, my swim time was faster
than 50% of the 358 participants. Being below the median, I am happy with this
time.
PART 2.
My T1 time between the
swimming segment and cycling segment was just over 3 min. Looking at the
results, I see that 75% of the participants did this faster than me. Oh well,
I'm not that competitive. To save time I skipped my cycling gloves and I also
didn't eat anything. I did get a swig of water.
Once on the bike, I started
strong and quickly realized that the one other person I knew doing this race
was just ahead of me. That's quite a coincidence, and I appreciated racing
immediately behind him for the first few miles. Drafting was not allowed, so I
kept a few bike lengths behind him. At one point I passed him going up a hill,
but he soon passed me, and then maintained his lead for the rest of the race.
The 40-km bike segment consisted of two
identical loops. The course wound around a few city blocks, then climbed an
entrance ramp onto a highway HOV lane (closed to car traffic). We followed the
HOV lane to its first exit (at Perrysville), looped around a park-and-ride lot,
and then followed the HOV lane back into downtown. Then repeated the loop.
Going into the race I was not concerned about the bike segment at all. I can
charge up the (steep) hills around my home without much trouble, so when I
looked at the bike route for the race I didn't see anything I couldn't handle
with ease. However, what I maybe didn't prepare myself for was the continuous
incline that the HOV lane features from the downtown entrance ramp to the
Perrysville Exit (approx. 3 miles). So while the slope of this hill wasn't bad,
its length tired me out. I maintained a speed around 10-11 mph going uphill and
then 22-24 mph going downhill. I was expecting a faster descent but the wind
was a headwind, I didn't pedal on some parts just to give my legs a rest, and
on the second descent I even stood up on the pedals (not aero!) to stretch some
really sore back and hip muscles. My max speed was 34.3 mph.
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| 40 km bike segment |
The part of the loop downtown
featured a lot of brick crosswalks that I had to be careful on as I rounded
corners. I saw one person had crashed taking a corner too tightly on the brick
surface (he was OK).
Probably my favorite part of the
bike segment was at the park-and-ride parking lot where volunteers were there
handing out water and Gatorade. Instead of handing us paper cups, they handed
us plastic bottles that fit into our water bottle cages. Since I was having a
hard time on the bike, I elected to take one of these bottles. I simply put my
hand out, and grabbed it as the volunteer held it out. I felt like "yeah,
he's on my team." It felt so natural and practiced, but I can't think of
any other time that I've grabbed something from someone while riding past them
at 15 mph (except maybe when I was a juvenile delinquent purse-snatcher...just
kidding). BTW, I had purposely left my water bottle off my bike during the
race, so when I was done drinking, I slipped it into that vacant spot on my
frame. I had decided against bringing water with me because I expected to
complete the bike segment in about an hour. I figured I'd be fine for an hour
without water. However, it took longer than an hour and I was glad to have a
drink.
My total time on the bike ranked low;
I was faster than only 25% of 358 participants. Obviously, this isn't very
good, and I knew that as soon as I started the bike segment. I passed almost no
one, and it seemed like nearly everyone passed me!
PART 3.
Given how tired and
hurting I was from my bike ride, and given how challenging running is for me, I
decided as I pulled into the transition area that I would walk my bike there,
rather than run with the bike to my assigned rack. I felt a little embarrassed
to walk, as everyone else was rushing around. But I needed to rest and re-group
for my run. I sat on my towel, changed my shoes, grabbed some food and drink,
and started the 10K run. And run, I did. It actually felt easy. My leg muscles were
not complaining and any discomfort I had from the bike ride dissolved. I was
worried about cramps, but no cramps! Several things caused my run to go really
smoothly. First, the aforementioned walk in the transition zone. Second, I knew
that a ton of people had passed me on the bike, so I no longer had the illusion
that I would have a competitive finish time. Therefore, I allowed myself to
just go slow. Third, I drank orange juice in the transition area. No, not
orange-flavored Gatorade. This was 100% pure orange juice left over from my
breakfast that I kept in a cooler. Oh, did that taste and feel good going down!
Real OJ has a lot of sugar and potassium, too, so it's just as good as the
artificial Gatorade stuff. Speaking of artificial stuff, the last thing I can
think of that led me to have a good run was GU packets. My triathlon shorts
have a zippered pocket in the back, and I stashed three packets there. GU is
really gross. Containing several types of sugar and some vitamins, it's like
consuming a flavored honey or drinking maple syrup. It doesn't feel or taste
good. But it really worked for me. It gave me the calories I needed to keep
going without putting solid food into a bouncing-around stomach. I haven't used
GUs before, so I felt a bit like those early astronauts that had to eat tubes
of food paste. (this allusion probably sounds strange to you, but for a moment
I was pretending to be an astronaut eating paste, and that was a pleasant
distraction from my run!).
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| Finishing up my 10K run |
The run course was on the
riverwalk that runs along the Allegheny River north from downtown (on the North
Shore). Half of it was paved and half was crushed stone. We ran 3.1 miles
north, turned around, and came back. Having runners using the same trail to go
both directions was useful because as a runner going the opposite direction
would approach, I'd glance at him or her, and wonder about who the person was:
how old they were, what they did at work, whether they had families, how rich
or poor they were. Just people-watching stuff to keep me entertained.
Like every other out-and-back
race I've done, the first half seemed to take forever. This is because I didn't
scout out the trail ahead of time and didn't know where the turn-around was.
But once I had turned around, I knew that I was halfway done. Of course, I knew
pretty well where I was along the course, first because there were volunteers
handing out water at every mile, and second because I was wearing my HR monitor
and it was telling me what my pace was.
Speaking of heart rate, I am
truly surprised that I kept it so low. When I run (up hills) near my home, my
HR regularly goes above 160, and sometimes higher than 180. But on this flat
course, I had a steady 150-155.
With 1 mile to go, I decided to
pick up the pace. After a pair of folks passed me, I thought maybe I would
increase my speed to keep up with them. That worked for a while, but ultimately
they were going too fast. Nevertheless, I was running faster and maintained a
quickened pace until the finish line. As I crossed over the finish mat, I saw
the time was just under 3 hours and my spirits raised considerably because I
realized that despite my slow biking and running segments, I still achieved my
goal. I wanted to finish in under 3 hours, and that's what I did. Amazing!
Moments after crossing the finish
line, I experienced something that has never happened to me. My eyes started to
tear up. This sensation lasted only a minute, but it was a curious experience.
Were these tears of exhaustion, or tears of joy, or...what? To be honest, I
wasn't all that exhausted, but still, with the cessation of exercise, I imagine
certain neurotransmitters and hormones started to change in their rates of
secretion. But even though I am a biologist, I don't think I need to come up
with a physiological explanation here. I think these were tears of joy. This
was my first Olympic-length triathlon (the ones I did last year were shorter),
and I have been looking forward to this day for months. To complete the
race--just to finish it--is a great feat that five years ago I never would have
imagined I could do. I am a confident person in many areas of my life, but a
race like this helps me realize that I can do great things in many more areas
than I previously thought. Joy. It feels good.
Oh, and just so you don't think
I'm a sap, I want you to know that no tears were actually shed. I only felt the
sensation of wanting to cry. The only thing running down my cheek was sweat.
