I had a great race. I was hoping to shave 10 minutes off my last year’s time of 5:23:49. My bike power is way up from last year as is my running vDot score. I hadn’t done a triathlon since IMLP in July of 2008, so it had been a while.
Executive Summary:
2009 2008
Swim
38:41/41:47
Bike
Bike
2:38:18/2:49:59
Run
Run
1:33:24/1:44:08
Total
Total
4:59:16/5:23:49
Details
The drive down from the San Francisco Bay area to Oceanside / San Diego on Thursday worked out well. The car was crowded with myself, Dianne, four kids; Kira, Conner, Parker and a Katryne, a friend of the family visiting California for the first time. Plenty of stops along the way including Denny’s, McDonalds, a gas station, and some other snack place that kept everyone in a good mood.
Friday was check-in day in the morning. Dianne pretended to be on vacation attending to multiple conference calls while the rest of us headed off to the expo and registration. After I purchased t-shirts for everyone we headed over the 20 steps or so to the beach. Kids had a blast. Parker insisted on being naked in the sand. Negotiations ended when he agreed to lose the shirt, shoes, socks and underwear, but the shorts stayed on. Conner wandered into the water with track pants on and complained for hours that his pants were completely wet, as he sat in the sand. Kira and Katryne just sat around getting sun burned. After lunch with John Stark we headed back to the hotel to pick up Dianne, who was suffering from cabin fever and we all drove the 40 minutes from Oceanside to San Diego to wander around. Friday evening was the Endurance Nation Triathlon Team (EN) dinner, which I attended and the family politely declined. Had fun, had a beer, and then went home to go to bed.
Saturday weather was excellent. A little cool in the morning, but when the sun came up, you could tell it was going to be a nice day.
The water was a typical 59 degrees. In prior years that had been my first open water swim of the year and it took 10 minutes or so to acclimatize, get over the panic attacks, freezing face and other exposed limbs and otherwise getting on with getting the swim over with. This year, I managed a couple of swims at Del Valle, a local lake over the past two weeks. I got the suffering over with and the swim turned out to be quite good. There was a lot of thrashing in our age group swim wave, and half way around we ran into a bunch of slow swimmers from the wave ahead of us. I was out of the water in just under 39 minutes, a couple of minutes ahead of last year.
T1 was comical as usual. The wetsuit came off really well, but then I went to apply a little body glide, only to find it had almost all melted. On to the sunscreen. I pulled the cap off and the bottle went flying. For a second or two I thought about just getting on the bike, but decided to chase the tube and reapply, fearing a major sunburn. My body still has a sunburned area from IM Arizona in 2007, so I gave up a few seconds to be a little smarter.
The bike went well. I averaged 242 for my Pnorm, up 20 watts from last year. The power dropped through the race, but I felt great, passed a bunch of people all day and didn’t worry about it. I could have gone faster on the back end, but I was doing well and didn’t want to blow up on the run. My IF was just under 0.8 and the VI was 1.05.
Nothing exciting in T2, just in and out.
For the run, I wasn’t sure what to expect. My last half marathon was a stand alone effort in October. The all out effort ended with a great 1:31 time for me. My running has improved over the off season and I’ve run a few very fast 5Ks, so I felt I could do better than last year’s Oceanside run of 1:44, but was not sure how much better. In the back of my mind I was thinking somewhere between 7:15 and 7:30 miles. I ran the first mile in 7:04 and felt like it was quite easy, except for the cursed sand. I can’t believe they reinserted the 100 yards of sand running again this year; single track running, where, of course, someone is always walking in front of me, so I have to run through 4 inches of beach sand to get around them for most of the distance, cursing to myself. Of course, it’s out and back, so four times across this mess. I digress. After the first mile, my brain goes into overdrive. If I go out to fast and blow up, Coach Patrick will surely make some comment – that I would totally deserve. I decide to plow on and see how it all falls out. In the end, I averaged 7:08 miles and was completely consistent all the way until the end with virtually no slowing down.
I knew that I had blown away last year’s numbers but was not sure of my final results. Kira met me at the end for a high five. The wave starts had me begin at 7:37 am. We checked her phone for the time (teenagers don’t have watches anymore), backed out the time it took us to meet and figured it was right around 5 hours. I’m not really sure why a few seconds really matter, but at the time, 5:00:01 was a whole lot different than 4:59:59. In the end a 4:59:16 was posted, so I smiled a lot all afternoon.
I have to add that the race organizers added a fantastic kid’s area to keep families busy during the race. The kids played in the jump houses for a long time, got tattoos, snacked at the “aid stations” and had a blast. Thumbs way up from all the parents. Kira also helped out applying tattoos and the organizers thanked her and presented her with a $15 iTunes card. She was stoked. This was the best ever IM family idea.
Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, it’s Disneyland. Wednesday, back in the car and heading home.
How many days until IM CdA
Details
The drive down from the San Francisco Bay area to Oceanside / San Diego on Thursday worked out well. The car was crowded with myself, Dianne, four kids; Kira, Conner, Parker and a Katryne, a friend of the family visiting California for the first time. Plenty of stops along the way including Denny’s, McDonalds, a gas station, and some other snack place that kept everyone in a good mood.
Friday was check-in day in the morning. Dianne pretended to be on vacation attending to multiple conference calls while the rest of us headed off to the expo and registration. After I purchased t-shirts for everyone we headed over the 20 steps or so to the beach. Kids had a blast. Parker insisted on being naked in the sand. Negotiations ended when he agreed to lose the shirt, shoes, socks and underwear, but the shorts stayed on. Conner wandered into the water with track pants on and complained for hours that his pants were completely wet, as he sat in the sand. Kira and Katryne just sat around getting sun burned. After lunch with John Stark we headed back to the hotel to pick up Dianne, who was suffering from cabin fever and we all drove the 40 minutes from Oceanside to San Diego to wander around. Friday evening was the Endurance Nation Triathlon Team (EN) dinner, which I attended and the family politely declined. Had fun, had a beer, and then went home to go to bed.
Saturday weather was excellent. A little cool in the morning, but when the sun came up, you could tell it was going to be a nice day.
The water was a typical 59 degrees. In prior years that had been my first open water swim of the year and it took 10 minutes or so to acclimatize, get over the panic attacks, freezing face and other exposed limbs and otherwise getting on with getting the swim over with. This year, I managed a couple of swims at Del Valle, a local lake over the past two weeks. I got the suffering over with and the swim turned out to be quite good. There was a lot of thrashing in our age group swim wave, and half way around we ran into a bunch of slow swimmers from the wave ahead of us. I was out of the water in just under 39 minutes, a couple of minutes ahead of last year.
T1 was comical as usual. The wetsuit came off really well, but then I went to apply a little body glide, only to find it had almost all melted. On to the sunscreen. I pulled the cap off and the bottle went flying. For a second or two I thought about just getting on the bike, but decided to chase the tube and reapply, fearing a major sunburn. My body still has a sunburned area from IM Arizona in 2007, so I gave up a few seconds to be a little smarter.
The bike went well. I averaged 242 for my Pnorm, up 20 watts from last year. The power dropped through the race, but I felt great, passed a bunch of people all day and didn’t worry about it. I could have gone faster on the back end, but I was doing well and didn’t want to blow up on the run. My IF was just under 0.8 and the VI was 1.05.
Nothing exciting in T2, just in and out.
For the run, I wasn’t sure what to expect. My last half marathon was a stand alone effort in October. The all out effort ended with a great 1:31 time for me. My running has improved over the off season and I’ve run a few very fast 5Ks, so I felt I could do better than last year’s Oceanside run of 1:44, but was not sure how much better. In the back of my mind I was thinking somewhere between 7:15 and 7:30 miles. I ran the first mile in 7:04 and felt like it was quite easy, except for the cursed sand. I can’t believe they reinserted the 100 yards of sand running again this year; single track running, where, of course, someone is always walking in front of me, so I have to run through 4 inches of beach sand to get around them for most of the distance, cursing to myself. Of course, it’s out and back, so four times across this mess. I digress. After the first mile, my brain goes into overdrive. If I go out to fast and blow up, Coach Patrick will surely make some comment – that I would totally deserve. I decide to plow on and see how it all falls out. In the end, I averaged 7:08 miles and was completely consistent all the way until the end with virtually no slowing down.
I knew that I had blown away last year’s numbers but was not sure of my final results. Kira met me at the end for a high five. The wave starts had me begin at 7:37 am. We checked her phone for the time (teenagers don’t have watches anymore), backed out the time it took us to meet and figured it was right around 5 hours. I’m not really sure why a few seconds really matter, but at the time, 5:00:01 was a whole lot different than 4:59:59. In the end a 4:59:16 was posted, so I smiled a lot all afternoon.
I have to add that the race organizers added a fantastic kid’s area to keep families busy during the race. The kids played in the jump houses for a long time, got tattoos, snacked at the “aid stations” and had a blast. Thumbs way up from all the parents. Kira also helped out applying tattoos and the organizers thanked her and presented her with a $15 iTunes card. She was stoked. This was the best ever IM family idea.
Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, it’s Disneyland. Wednesday, back in the car and heading home.
How many days until IM CdA
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