KENNETT PETERSON

I hadn’t been on the bike long when I realized my legs simply didn’t have it, and the last race of the year, Indian Wells 70.3, was just going to be a matter of trying to keep a smile on my face and reach the finish line with a few large handfuls of Maurten gels to help offset the expense of the trip. To say that this year has been a disappointment, in terms of race results, is a. . . statement (it’s actually not an understatement like you thought I was going to say—I despise that exaggerated expression because it can only be used improperly).

With a DNF from mild hypothermia at Texas, a 13 mile jog to barely reach the finish line at Boulder 70.3, and 30th place at Indian Wells, the only successful day I had this year in triathlon racing was at Wildlife Loop. I won that one, but it’s a small event (it still felt really good winning it though). I also won a 5K here in Tucson a few weeks before Indian Wells, so that was also a fun day.

However, the last six weeks of training leading up to Indian Wells were some of the most consistent I’ve had when it comes to performing well at all three events. Every week included at least one really good session in each of the three sports—and often two good sessions per week in each sport—which has been rare for me over the years. Typically, I’ll maybe have one good run and one good bike ride per week, then the running legs fall off for a month and I’ll have one good swim and one good bike per week for the next month. I almost never have three to five good sessions per week, which has been the norm. Ever since Chris Leiferman came down to train in Tucson for Cozumel in early November, I started ticking off good sessions regularly.

Some of these solid performances included masters swim sets making 2:30 send-offs for 200s, regularly performing well on Tucson’s TMFR group ride (normalized power was typically 350 to 370 for 50-ish minutes on these), and running 5:3X pace off the bike for various chunks of time without lung cramps or asthmatic breathing issues, a victory in and of itself. One solid two-day block actually came Monday and Tuesday of race week. On Monday I did a 2.5 hour ride on Mt. Lemmon averaging 347 to milepost nine, then ran 5.5 miles off the bike averaging 5:42 pace. The following day I rode a little under three hours during the TMFR group ride, normalizing 367 watts for 48 minutes while sharing pulls with Ben Hoffman in a two-man breakaway, then performed well at noon masters later that day. Note: I essentially took my taper week a week early due to Thanksgiving and bad weather; usually I don’t go this hard race week. 

For the two weeks leading up to the race, I was extra paranoid that I was going to get sick or injured before race day. Something was going to keep me from performing well. But I made it to Saturday (the race was Sunday) and was still healthy! In fact, I had some of my best-ever bike openers on Saturday, easily hitting 420+ watts for two minutes in all of my openers. But apparently I peaked a day early. That’s the only explanation I have at this point (other than possibly going too hard on Monday/Tuesday), because 18 hours later I seemed to have lost virtually all of the fitness I’d built up this fall. 

I swam okay. Not great, but good enough. I felt somewhat sluggish in the first few hundred meters and didn’t make it into a great group, but was able to close a gap later in the swim to maintain contact with the front half of the group I was in, and came out mid-pack at 25:49—enough to exit the water with Sam Long and ahead of Trevor Foley. My goal for the bike had been to either hold onto Sam’s wheel for as long as possible, or if he got away quickly, to ride hard solo and figure out where Trevor was on one of the turnarounds. If he was close, I’d potentially ride easy for a bit to let him catch me, then work with him. Indian Wells is pretty much as flat as a course can get, and with roughly 50 male pros, it was going to be a draft-fest. I assumed I needed to have someone to work with if I was going to make it to one of the front groups and still be able to run well.

But Sam got away as I wasted time with my broken zipper in transition. It was just the second time I’d used the new skin suit and the zipper broke—possibly from my inflated ego—as I attempted to zip it up after shedding my wetsuit. I take that back. I don’t actually think I had an inflated ego. I just liked the metaphor. Or analogy. Symbolism. Whatever it is. 

My legs cramped after about a mile of riding, which is normal for me at the very beginning of a race. But they never really un-seized. I tried riding hard again a few minutes later when I thought they’d allow it, but I was still having trouble pushing anything over 300 watts. I continued sitting in with the small group of four that I’d merged with, Robbie Deckard leading the way, waiting as patiently as I could for things to start feeling better. Typically they cramp up very briefly and I’m able to start pushing hard after one or two minutes of easy riding. But I went to the front and was met, again, with acid in my quads and glutes. I looked down and saw that I was only averaging something like 310 at that point, four or five miles into the race, so 40 to 50 watts lower than what I’d planned on doing for the first 20 or 30 minutes. 

Trever passed a short while later and I made no attempt to get on his wheel. There was no way my dead legs would allow it. With my unzipped jersey flapping in the wind and my legs flapping uselessly below, I drifted to the back of our group that was (mostly) forming from behind, eventually swelling to nine of us by mile 25 or so. My race ambitions were over, other than to try and enjoy getting to be in a race, and to see if I had anything special for the run. Placing in the top 10 was already a non-option, but maybe I could get a run PR. It had seemed possible, even likely, a few days earlier. A 1:14 half marathon would do it, but by the time I got off the bike (average power was just 288 and roughly 30 to 40 watts lower than what I thought I’d do) and donned running shoes, my legs were as flat and weak as they’d been on the bike. After three miles of trying, I began slowing down to slightly above endurance pace, just wanting to finish and get off the course, almost embarrassed at how poorly I’d performed compared to how fit I was.

But racing for results alone isn’t a good way to judge yourself, at least for me. Having this race on the calendar got me out the door for early morning rides, had me running hard off the bike on tired legs, and got me to the pool on days I would have rather just sat at home and rested. I truly enjoyed the training and the comradery I’ve had down here at masters and group rides—more so than I’ve enjoyed training these past few years. Tucson doesn’t have the mountain scenery or the long, winding climbs of Boulder that pop you out onto quiet, dirt roads at 9,000 feet among the aspens, but there are some other great aspects to Tucson: consistently good weather, free community pools close to home, an excellent masters program, two blazingly fast group rides per week, and the Loop path for running and riding, sans irate drivers. The race didn’t go well, but this was potentially the fittest I’ve been—across the three sports—since I started triathlon. That alone was gratifying, especially at the decrepit age of 38.

Next year will be my last year as a pro, and my last year racing triathlon in general because I have no desire to race in the age group field. Once I’m done with triathlon, I’ll be moving on to different sports if I decide to compete in anything (I’ll still run, ride, and swim for my own neurotic exercise purposes). But it’s about time to start focusing on other things in life, like stockpiling guns and canned food in preparation for the end of civilization. And yard work. Lots of yard work. 

I’m going to keep the ending of this post short and simple because I’ve got some other writing to take care of. Bye. 

Like any good day, my day started at Day’s Inn with waffles and coffee at 6:30 in the morning. I moved about slowly in the below-ground, windowless dining room, knowing there was no reason to show up too early to the race. This year, Wildlife Loop had around 75 competitors split between the 70.3, Olympic, and Sprint distances, and the parking lot was 50 feet from transition. It would take just 15 minutes to rack my bike, rubber band my shoes to my bike (to keep them from spinning while running out of transition), and don a wetsuit. So I sat listening to a TV weather report on repeat, forcing down cheap carbs until just past 7:00.

Race director Brandon Zelfer has always allocated a fair bit of prize money for the 70.3 ever since he started putting on Wildlife Loop 10 years ago, but this year a substantially larger $20,000 purse (contingent on the number of participants) was announced, which drew a half dozen male pros, mostly from Colorado. The seven or eight of us vying for that prize money lined up in chest-deep water as the countdown began. One other racer, possibly competing in the Olympic distance event, chose to start five feet directly in front of us, and refused to move when someone politely suggested he slot in alongside everyone else. “The race director said we could line up wherever we wanted,” he quipped. About seven hours later I came up with the great comeback of, “If that’s true, I’ll start at the third buoy!”

That’s what I should have said!

The guy became a speed bump—I assume he didn’t drown—and caused chaos in a swim start that should have been uncontentious for once. 

Since Custer, South Dakota, sits at around 5,000 feet and I 1) don’t swim well at altitude and B) have been living at sea level for two months, I didn’t sprint to close a gap when the fight for position finished 200 meters into the swim. A flashback from Boulder 70.3 in June of having to breaststroke was encouragement enough to just fall in line and rely on my biking ability. This proved to be successful as I and the two other guys I swam with (Taylor Reid and Brand Scheel maybe?) came out of the water just a minute or so behind Ben Deal, who I believe was first out, followed closely by Todd Suttor and possibly one other. 

The bike course starts out with a 10-ish mile rolling descent, none of which is very steep. Therefore pedaling is required. I caught Todd by mile four or five and wasted little time passing the RV that he’d just become stuck behind. The course isn’t closed to traffic, so wildlife-gazing tourists tend to clog up this section of the course if you’re going over 30 miles per hour. And the wildlife did not disappoint, because just after I caught Todd, a large herd of mountain goats meandered across the road in front of me. I touched the brakes and cut through a gap, quickly getting back on the pedals in my worry that there were five more guys up the road. 

A few miles later I caught Ben, who was in first place, my legs relishing the non 100-degree air temperature that I’ve grown accustomed to in Tucson. I built a 30 second lead by the first turnaround, which I nearly overshot, and began the rolling 10-mile climb, which is broken by multiple descents. I hit the lower slopes pushing threshold power, legs feeling fresh and (as I just mentioned) enjoying the cool weather and the shade offered by the pines. Lately, when it’s been above 95 degrees—which is all of my rides except the two group rides I do that start super early—I have trouble pushing even 180 watts during the warm up, which is incredibly demoralizing. I’ve actually come to believe that training in ‘super heat’ takes about two times the bite out of one’s watts that training at mid-altitude does.

I cruised through the first lap with an average power of 308 (normalized 322)—pretty decent for me on a hilly bike course at 5K elevation. The next lap was less spectacular as I began running out of energy and conserving for the run. I knew the gap to Ben was over four minutes at the second turnaround, and I believed I could hold him off if I had at least a six minute lead off the bike, though that was just a wild guess. I truly had no idea what type of run I’d be capable of since I’d basically shut down my run training three weeks prior due to a hip injury. In fact, despite one of my main goals of the season being to improve my run, I’d hardly done any serious running since May, due to various injuries. 

The run started out poorly as my chest cramped all over the place, but thankfully With Enough Caffeine, Shame, and Fear, Anything is Possible™ (a better and more accurate slogan than Ironman’s). By mile two I’d peed and farted out the chest cramps, or something, and began picking up the pace as my asthmatic lungs quieted down. I’d come off the run with about seven minutes and I still had a five minute lead at mile four after the second turnaround. I began conversing with myself about just how hard to push, if I should save energy for the hills, what I’d do if I got caught. I tried convincing myself that I’d still be happy with second place after a good swim and bike. You haven’t been run training anyway. Just pack it in and be content with whatever happens! 

Deep down I knew that if I just made it to the halfway point, I’d be willing to die in order to stay in first place, but with nine miles still to go I allowed myself to be a weak-willed-wimp, pardon my French. It had been a long time since I raced hard to the end, and it took a moment to get in the right mindset of taking things mile by mile. Racing is all about living in the moment, and just in case all of your nerve endings are dead, know that this moment sucks and that you’re causing permanent brain damage at the very least™ (another improvement on Ironman’s slogan).

At the halfway point I still had a 4 to 5 minute lead, sitting at an average of 6:20-ish minute per mile pace on a fairly hilly run course. I kept applying pressure, trying to trick myself that the finish line was the last turnaround with 3.5 miles to go. I forced down the last of my gel flask and dumped two bottles of water over my head at the next aid station, finally and truly suffering. Earlier I hadn’t been in any real pain, just anxiety about being caught. Now the pain was digging itself into my legs, stomach, and intestines. It didn’t matter that this was a small race in a place that no one has ever heard of (unless you’ve visited Mt. Rushmore). Maybe this was the last race I’d ever do. Maybe I wouldn’t get around to finishing out the season like I’d been planning, and something would come up in 2024 to spoil my final year of racing. Half-assing it for the next five or six miles to win by a minute was not how I wanted to end things.

By the final turnaround I still had a four minute lead on Ben, who grunted out “it’s yours” or something to that degree as we passed each other on the narrow bike path. I kept running hard until I got to the final climb with two miles to go, then eased up on account of my hip, not wanting to needlessly set its recovery back any further. 11 hard miles was plenty. 

I crossed the finish line and my anxiety and the pressure I’d put on myself vanished. Finally a good performance—the first since a year ago at Embrunman. I wouldn’t say that a weight was lifted, but I do feel more confident heading into the next few races this fall. Confident that I’ll be able to perform well (though not necessarily get on the podium or anything) and more importantly confident that, despite the result, I’ll actually be able to enjoy the trip, the excitement of racing, the people, the scenery of a new place, and most importantly the continental breakfasts. 

Thank you to everyone who showed up to race, to the volunteers, and to Branden Zelfer and his mom for investing so much of their time, energy, and money into this event. 

It’s week three and the crotch swamp and resulting chafing has set in hard, even though the temperature has steadily been dropping from 108 – 112 the first week we were here to a more comfortable 100 – 106 this past week. The problem is that all of my shorts have a liner, and if I go outside for more than about two minutes, the liner is bound to become saturated, requiring a change of shorts if I have an extra pair lying around.  And I only have so many shorts to go through in three days—about the timeframe I have to do a load of laundry—so other than doing laundry every two days, which would be insanity, my solution either lies with talcum powder or vaseline. Possibly both at the same time. 

This will most likely be the last week I do this weekly training update, by the way. I may try to keep the blog alive with training and racing stories, and rants, like in the old days. Or I may give it up again. But I already keep a personal training journal, so this feels redundant. And if I have the time to write two training journals, I should probably just start on another next manuscript instead. Or get a real job. 

I’ve been reading through some of my old blogs from years past and it feels like an entirely other person wrote them. The excitement, sarcasm, self-deprecation, and fake arrogance (and real arrogance) that made those posts so good, or horrible, seem to belong to someone else. Maybe I’m just out of practice. Maybe I just need something else to write about and the ability will come back. 

I think this blog died a slow death right after I started triathlon. Triathlon, as a sport, just hasn’t been the same type of muse that bike racing was for me. The racing is not nearly as exciting for one thing. But the lifestyle—the lack of teammate shenanigans, the reduced travel schedule, the stability that doing three sports instead of one requires—I think is the main issue. To be a good triathlete (and I’m not saying I’m good, by the way), requires a fairly boring day to day. Consistency. Rest. Dealing with injuries. For whatever reason, bike racing invited chaos, not just in races but in life as well. And chaos makes for good writing. Or maybe I was just young.

Another manuscript may be calling my name. And hopefully more law firm website pages because unpublished manuscripts don’t pay the bills. 

Monday

6.3 mile run. My shins and calves were still incredibly achy and I had to stop at mile 3 to walk. Should have turned around there and taken the shortest way home, but I was being stubborn and continued on. Ended up walking/jogging home. Need to just take the rest of the week very easy on runs. 

1 hr easy spin on the road bike. 

20 min strength. Main lift was Bulgarians. Skipped deadlift. Probably need to back off the strength a tad to let my legs recover. 

Tuesday

3.75 hr Tuesday Morning Fairwheel Ride. AV 214 NP 260. Stronger group today so I sat in for the first third of it, fearful of the McCain climb (it’s like 2.5 minutes, so super long and hard). Managed to make the front group of three again. Normalized power for the hardest 30 minutes was 370. 

Wednesday

4 mile run at 7:59 pace. Shins felt a little achy in the last mile, but not horrible. I was able to run the whole thing at least.

50 min endurance 3K swim. Did this swim at UofA. A bit too warm, but manageable. Decided I should start kicking while swimming. Aside from really focusing on the swim and putting in +20K a week of structured workouts and masters, I think that adding the kick (I currently do not kick at all) is the only way to get faster. This week, as you’ll see, I’m essentially only riding because my lower legs are fucked and the masters group that I just joined is off for the week because the pool is being cleaned. 

2.5 hr ride with the El Groupo team as a volunteer coach. Rode with three teenagers who are stoked about bike racing. It brought back memories. Not of being a teenager because that was too long ago to remember, but of being stoked about bike racing. 

Thursday

1.25 hr easy spin. AV 160. This is how champions are made. Or so I hear. 

Friday

2.5 hr ride 6×4 min Vo2. Average interval power was 394, up 8 watts from last week’s average (386). Granted, it was cooler today than last week, but things are looking up! Just 50 more watts to go and I’ll be back to where I was 10 years ago (at altitude). 

5 mile easy run. 7:41 pace. Lower legs held up, but just barely. 

Saturday

3.5 hour Shootout ride. Same size group as the Tuesday ride with a lot of the same guys. A few new people as well, though technically I’m the new guy. Made the selection over the bridge but got beaten on Sprint hill by an El Groupo rider, Elliot, who was less than half my age. It was a fun, hard 40 minutes spent at a normalized power of 372 for the race portion, and two hours at NP 321. No way I’d ride this hard by myself. I’m very fortunate these two group rides exist, though I really should start riding the TT bike at some point. . . 

3.3 mile run off at 7:24 pace. Lower legs were aching so I had to take it easy. 

Sunday

6 mile hike starting from Gordon Hirabayashi trailhead on Mt. Lemmon with Adelaide and Maybellene.

35 min strength. Normal lower body routine of:

• About 5 minutes of band exercises to tire out the glutes so they don’t interfere with the rest of the workout
• Bulgarian split squats 3×8 each leg at 125 lbs (for my fucked up knees)
• One round of 25 x Mobo board band dips and 25 x Toe Pro calf raises in between the BSS sets (for my fucked up plantar)
• Deadlift 5×3 at 275 lbs (for my fucked up testosterone)
• 10 bent over Ts (12 lb dumbbells) in between each deadlift set (for my fucked up back)

Monday

10 mile run, 6:37 pace. Drove one mile from home to the bike path so I could access my cooler with cold bottles every 3 miles. Legs were already pretty achy by the second lap (6 miles in), so I cut the run short to 10 miles from the planned 13. Happy with the pace though. 

2K easy swim. Pool was too hot to do anything fast or long. I’m considering joining a masters group later this month, but I’m content focusing on the bike and run for the time being since the first race I’m training for (Wildlife Loop) does not have a make or break swim group. 

35 min strength. Swapped out deadlift with side lunges because my legs and hip were wrecked. 

Tuesday

2.75 hour Tuesday morning fairwheel ride, same as last week. There were some stronger guys there this week and I got my legs ripped off by Hoffman. 23 minutes at NP 372 for the hardest section. 

16 min 2 mile run off. Hip was still really sore from the run yesterday so I kept it short and easy.

4 mile evening hike with Adelaide. 

Wednesday

3K easy swim. Even the UofA pool is too hot for me to do a decent-paced workout. Took the rest of the day off from training because I’ve been pretty tired the past few days. 

Thursday

3 hrs still on the road bike since I need to finish switching out brake pads for the TT bike. AV 211 NP 256. 6×4 min on Lemmon (385, 385, 385, 388, 385, 393). 4 min rests. Continued up to mile 13 before flipping. Goal is 8×4 at 400+ watts by the end of the month. 

3.2 mile fast run off at 6:08 pace. Fucking hot. 100 degrees since I started the ride late. Cooked by the time I got home.

35 min strength. Main lifts Bulgarians 3×8 at 125, deadlift 5×3 at 275. Felt a lot better today than yesterday. I must have needed the rest. These early mornings are really getting to me though. I usually don’t wake up until 7:30. Lately I’ve been getting up between 6:00 and 6:30—even earlier for the group ride. 

Friday

5.9 mile run. Goal was to do a fast paced 75 minute hilly loop, but my lower legs were wrecked so I turned around early.

Masters swim at Ford Aquatics. 3.5K long course, meters. Finally a pool with water temperature that’s tolerable to swim in. Felt really out of swimming shape. I wonder why.

20 min upper body strength. Overhead press, skull crusher, pullups, shin strengthening machine thing.

Saturday

3.75 hr road bike ride on Lemmon. AV 219 NP 235. Skipped the Shootout again because of the early morning and needing to sleep in. Getting out the door at 5:40 is a big struggle. Hopefully it’ll happen next week. 

35 min strength. Normal lower body routine. 

Sunday

6 mile run. Shins were still achy but I wanted to get at least a little speed this week. Did this moderate run workout on the bike path hoping I’d still be able to do a longer run tomorrow: 1600, 1200, 800, 400 with 90 second rests. Paces were pretty restrained: 6:15, 6:05, 6:06, 5:51. My lower leg pain happened earlier this year after a break from running and eventually went away, but it took a few weeks. I’m prepared for that to happen again. 

20 min 1K float in one of the city pools. 

As some of you know, Adelaide, Maybellene and I moved to Tucson last week for the upcoming school year. Adelaide landed a 4th grade teaching job back in April when we were here for spring break, so we’ll be in Tucson until June of 2024. It’s a big shift, but not as much as moving to a new city; we’ve owned a place in Tucson since 2020 and have spent most of each winter here hiding from the snow ever since.

So, what have I been up to since my last post, roughly 10 months ago? “Are you still training and racing?” you may ask. “Um, why?” you may also ask. “Aren’t you like 59 by now?” The answer to the first question is yes. The answer to the second question (why) is a little more difficult to answer. I started the year feeling pretty decent, taking things slow with swimming and riding but racking up the miles on the run. But I DNFed Ironman Texas in the spring after getting hypothermic in the non-wetsuit swim. Next, I raced Boulder 70.3 but blew up after the bike. My head simply hadn’t been in a good place since Texas, and I was focused on other things in life, so I decided to not start Ironman CDA in June. Then I took six weeks off from training to travel, finish our kitchen remodel, and pack up and move to Tucson. So the year, at least in terms of race performances, has been a zero. In other areas of life I’ve gotten to do some pretty cool things.

Exercising hard will always be part of my day-to-day, but I need to find a better way to keep it fun and exciting. Racing is just a byproduct of training, and racing hasn’t always been enjoyable. In fact, it’s pretty stressful the way I’ve been going about it—putting nearly two decades of what I view as athletic failures into each race. If I can just do well at one it’ll all be worthwhile. My friend Justin calls it redemption racing, which I think is a perfect description. It puts a lifetime of pressure on each performance, which is super healthy.

As I contemplate what’s next in life (should I become a firefighter, an astronaut, or a ditch-digger?) I’ll continue racing triathlon, but only if I can make it enjoyable. However, I’m already getting excited about other things—maybe taking a surf trip to the Dominican Republic, trail racing, bike packing, and possibly youth coaching. I’m also considering getting an MFA in creative writing to boost my burgeoning (I don’t really know what that word means) novel-writing career, though I realize this is a big gamble and another performance-driven objective, which isn’t necessarily healthy long-term if I’m not able to meet my goal of getting published.

I have to keep my musings shorter than I might otherwise because I have a lot of very important law blogs for personal injury attorneys to catch up on, but I’ll end with the commitment of keeping an online training journal, which is where this blog began. Maybe it will help keep me excited about training. Maybe I’ll bore myself with it and end it in a week.

Reading through my friend Justin Daer’s blog about the training he’s doing for the Otillo swim-run race in Sweden is the inspiration to get back to my blog’s roots. The “training camp” I reference in the title is, of course, I joke. ‘Tucson normal life camp for the next 10 months’ would be a more accurate title. Anyway…

Monday

Easy, enjoyable 1.5 hr ride on the bike path. Not used to the heat down here yet, so the power was very low. Plus I’m in horrible shape. Side note: cicadas are extremely loud! I haven’t seen one yet, so I’m not entirely sure they exist. 

40 min strength session with Adelaide. I haven’t lifted in a month so I went real light with Bulgarian split squats, deadlift, and some other random things. I’ll probably get incredibly sore anyway.

Tuesday

2.75 hr Tuesday morning group ride. Pretty happy with how I felt, and that I woke up at 5:20 to get there on time. Normalized power was 342 for 48 minutes, with 638 watts for the final minute during the race up Gate’s pass.

30 min run off the bike (4.6 miles). This turned into a real struggle at the 10 min mark when I realized I had vastly under-fueled during the ride. I stupidly continued on and finally flipped it at 20 minutes. I had to stop and walk in the shade for half a mile to stave off a bonk, but got home alive and ready for a soda by 9:30, at which point it was 95 degrees.

4K (yards) endurance swim. Rode my e-bike to the UofA pool in 112 degree heat. The ride, including stoplight time, takes about 20 minutes each way, so it’s a lot of time in the heat. But the UofA pool is significantly cooler (it’s still too warm) than the closer city pools.

20 min upper body strength session with Adelaide. Light weights. 

Wednesday

9.2 mile run workout. 4×1 mile with 90 seconds to 2 min rests. Super hot. Started late at 8:00 (90 degrees) and finished just after 9:00 (95 degrees). It went better than I thought it might though. 5:39, 5:27, 5:47, 5:36. 

2.4K easy swim at a nearby pool. 35 min. The water was hot but I’m starting to get acclimated. Or just acclimated to swimming slow. 

35 min strength session. Getting close to normal weights. Glute band work, 3×10 Bulgarian split squats at 95 lbs, 5×3 deadlift at 255 to 265 lbs, bent over Ts with 12lbs. 

Thursday

5 hour ride up to the tippy top of Mt. Lemmon. Average power 218, normalized power 235. Nothing to write home or a blog about, but I was happy to get the distance in. I drank somewhere between 10 and 12 bottles (5-6 liters) despite being up high in the cool 90 degree mountain air for most of the ride. 

4 mile evening walk with Adelaide. We saw one rattle snake and one tarantula hawk (a large red wasp) dragging a dead tarantula across the path. I normally wouldn’t include this as a workout, but when we started at 7pm it was 104 degrees, and still over 100 when we got back in the dark. If I had to guess, I’d say I sweated around five gallons today. THAT’S a lot of SWEAT! THAT’S an overused Kung POW JOKE!

Friday

9.7 mile hilly run route. Average 7:33 pace. Felt tired starting out but not too bad after all the hills were done.

2.8K swim. Main set was two rounds of 10×75 alternating fast and easy. Nothing was fast though since the water temperature was 91 degrees. Combined with the air temperature, that equals 200 degrees. So I was swimming in 200 degree water. 

40 min strength. Glutes band exercises, 3×10 Bulgarians at 95, 5×3 deadlift at 275, bent over Ts, Mobo board and Toe Pro for my planter. 

Saturday

5 mile hike with Adelaide and Maybellene on Mt. Lemmon.

Sunday

3.25 hr ride. Gate’s pass. Average power 210. NP 233.

30 min upper body strength with Adelaide. Heavier weights this time. Bench, pullups, rows, skull crushers, overhead press. I usually do upper body strength about twice a year or less. So I should be set after this week. 

I’m making a pretty huge snafu (I think that’s a word) by posting this race report out of chronological order—a first for this blog—but I wrote this a few weeks ago so I might as well share it. Because it doesn’t count if you don’t tell someone about it, publicly. 

There’s not always a home course advantage when it comes to triathlon. Knowledge isn’t always power. For example, knowing what lies ahead might be a disadvantage in some scenarios; if you’re suffering and you know exactly how long a climb is, there isn’t any room for hope that the top might be right around the corner. Another detractor of racing at home is the lack of preparation that getting to the race takes. There isn’t as much weight behind finishing, or at least finishing strong, when you live three miles from the middle of the run course. That’s what happened last year—I was on an extremely off day and I just pulled the plug five miles into the bike leg. I probably extended my life by five years since the air quality index was 190 that day, so I’m not complaining. 

Anyways, I vowed to at least finish the damn race today. If nothing else, it would be a good training day for Embrunman in nine days time.

After a very average swim, during which I almost had to stop and breaststroke at 200 meters because I was so out of breath (thought: it should be called breathstroke), I entered T1 a few seconds behind Tripp Hipple. He darted away into the distance as I staggered up the dock like a dumbfound walrus realizing I could somehow, despite physics, stand and balance on two feet. If I hadn’t been so slow through transition, Tripp and I would have made a good fighting force on the bike. But I found myself alone by the time I was on my bike, in 19th place or so.

At the first turnaround, maybe three miles into the bike, it appeared that I was four minutes behind the leaders. Not a great start to the day. I’d lost almost a full minute catching my breath. (Still haven’t found it). But four minutes wasn’t un-closeable. I was somewhat confident I could still catch everyone up the road. It took a while for my legs to recover from dragging lifelessly two feet below the surface of the water for the past half hour (shouldn’t they have been fully rested?), but I eventually began passing people. At the top of Neva Road I heard I was 2:45 down. Or maybe 3:45. I wasn’t sure. But it was less than four minutes. 

There was no pacing to be done. I just went pretty much as hard as I could, incapable of putting in a sharp effort to catch the lead group, but diesel enough to keep plugging along. 

By the top of Hygiene—roughly two-thirds of the way through the bike—I’d inched my way through the field and the gap to the leaders was down to 1:15. The group of five included Hoffman, Metzler, Hipple, and two ITU guys I didn’t know: Andrie and Sharpe. The catch was imminent, but it didn’t appear that I’d be coming off the bike with any sort of sizable gap—a bit of a problem because I only started running four weeks ago due to a knee injury from earlier this summer (the reason I didn’t attempt to finish Oregon 70.3).

I ended up with about a 50 second lead off the bike (Tripp was right there with me but he had to serve a five minute penalty) and I set out on the run with the rest of those guys breathing down my neck. As usual, the first few miles of the run were dominated by chest cramps and near-hyperventilation from asthma. I looked at my watch with dread at the near-walking pace I was setting. It wasn’t much faster than my goal marathon pace for Embrun coming up next week. Andrie passed me. Then Sharpe. Then Metzler. I tried to use each of them, but my legs and my head weren’t the problem. My lungs just wouldn’t cooperate. 

My breathing issues didn’t fade until mile seven, at which point I was already down to 6th place. Then, all of a sudden, I found that I could draw in and expel air again. I picked up the pace and held onto 6th, unintentionally negative-splitting the hell out of the half marathon (first 7 miles were 6:30 minutes/mile and the last 6 miles were 6:05 minutes/mile).

While I was hoping for a podium (and secretly a win), I’m pretty content with how the race went. My bike fitness is pretty good right now, especially for longer stuff, and I think my legs will be able to handle a slow marathon next week in France. Looking at past results, a strong ride backed up by a three-hour marathon would put me on the podium.

More importantly than what this race means for Embrunman, it felt good to just be in the mix again, and have some type of impact on the race. It’s been a while.

A breathed a sigh of relief. The Wilmington convenience store had knock-off Imodium, saving Adelaide and I a 45 minute round trip drive into Lake Placid for diarrhea medicine. I snagged a couple candy bars for the special needs bag. Then went back and grabbed a second pack of Imodium. On race day, you can’t have too solid a poop.

I woke up the next morning, the day before the race, with a fairly loose bowel movement, but no diarrhea. Everything seemed to be coming up Milhouse. 

Race Day

Heavy drizzle turned to heavy rain as I organized my gear in the darkness of transition. I didn’t get much sleep the night before, which was normal, but I felt rested and ready for the race. There were only two or three competitors I felt like I had to really worry about, and a win felt within grasp if I was on a good day. A podium seemed like a sure thing, though a DNF was on tap.

I found myself somewhat near the front of the swim in the first few hundred meters, which was an accomplishment in and of itself. And by near the front, I mean I was close enough to spot the lead paddleboard at one point. I bridged a small gap after the first turn buoy and forced myself to scrape the guy’s feet in front as much as possible to keep focused and on pace, as I was on the limit for the first 20-odd minutes. 

The four of us in our group finished the first lap and ran up onto land before diving back in, while a steady stream of age groupers began pouring into the lake just to the side of us. I thought I was set up for a great swim time, and I knew it would be difficult staying with the two faster swimmers in front of me as we cut our way through the chaotic age group mass. I had to keep in contact, especially since I didn’t know where the swim exit was. 

Within a half minute of reentering the water, an age grouper swam into me from the side and pushed down on my left shoulder, sinking me. I kicked frantically and swung my arm out wide to hit him off me. A few minutes later a different age grouper began backstroking into the pro in front of me. Eventually, we finished the loop section of the swim course and found ourselves in clean water, four or five hundred meters from the swim exit.

Back on land, my lungs and sides cramped and I lost contact with my swim-mates as we ran up a long, steep hill into transition. As I approached our bike rack, panting heavily in a daze, I noticed that Matt Russell and Joe Skipper’s bikes were still racked. A head start! I knew that those two guys, plus Rasmuss Sveningson, would probably be my main competition. There were a few French pros in the race as well, but I didn’t know much about them other than the fact that they stuffed their bento boxes with delicious mounds of Munster, Tomme, Gruyere, Camembert, and Roquefort. That’s a French cheese joke. 

Onto the bike, I was confident I’d be able to get up to the front in 30 or 45 minutes of hard riding. The roads were wet, our visors were fogged, and there was a short technical descent through town, perfect for shaving off half a minute without any effort at all. After town, we hit the hills. 

A few miles into the bike and my legs were still recovering from the swim, and I hadn’t managed to pull back much time on the guys who I exited the water with. It’s a long day, I reminded myself. Still though, I began worrying that I might not have it today.

Over the first series of climbs, I began passing my former swim-teammates one by one. I’d exited the water in 15th, and by the first short out and back section I counted that I was in 11th or 12th and about three minutes down. I still had serious work to do. 

I continued chipping away as the road descended, then flattened out, then began climbing again. The course was as hilly as any North American Ironman gets, which was part of the allure, though I realized that being in a group would still be a huge benefit for most of it. There were plenty of fast, flat sections of road. And wind. 

I chugged more calories, intent on not making the same fueling error as I did in Tulsa, and kept my head down, still picking off the odd guy now and then. My power wasn’t great (295 at mile 30 or so), but I was confident that I’d at least make contact. At this point, I changed my strategy from blowing by the front group to just sitting in and saving it for the later part of the second lap. My legs just weren’t coming around for some reason. Even though I’d trained harder and more consistently than I had back in the spring, I was riding 20 watts lower than I did for the first 2.5+ hours at Tulsa.

At the next turn around, at mile 35, I counted a group of seven as they blew by downhill going the opposite direction. All I had to make up was 90 seconds and I could sit in and recover for a bit. Over the next 10 miles, I continued losing steam, though I was able to hold the same power. At every long straightaway, I willed the group to appear up the road. I passed one guy that had fallen out of the group, but somehow the five or six up the road had put massive time into me.

I finished the first lap, descended through town again, and began dragging my tiring body up the next set of hills at mile 60. I turned right off the main road onto the two-mile out and back section, and saw that I was a few minutes behind two guys, but three more had completely disappeared, making it through the entire out and back before I even arrived. Meanwhile, a group of five or six containing Matt and Joe was quickly approaching from behind. Fuck. I was in no-man’s land. I weighed my options and decided to sit up and rest until Matt, Joe, and the three or four others in that group caught me. I could sit in and rest, then help pull back whoever was drilling it up front.

What I didn’t know was that I had lost over three and a half minutes from mile 35 to 56, despite holding the exact same power average of 295. It turned out that the lead moto likely played a huge role in this. Earlier, I noticed that the lead vehicle was close to the leaders at the 35 mile marker turn around, though I hadn’t given it much thought at the time.

Matt, Joe, Kevin Portman, and three other guys caught me at the 70-ish mile marker and I began sitting in on a long flat section, wondering what was going on with my legs. I downed more calories and caffeine but felt weaker as we went. Kevin took a couple big pulls while the rest of us sat in. We took a left turn up a rolling climb with a strong headwind and I noticed that one of the guys in the group was consistently riding three bike lengths back from the guy in front of him. After five minutes of this, I asked the official that was riding next to us if he was going to do anything about it. I watched as the official rode up to him, slowed, then passed without doing anything. I’d never seen more intentionally illegal drafting than that, and if the reff wasn’t going to card him, no one was getting carded today. *(See footnote for legal drafting description).

At mile 90, Matt put in an attack and opened some distance to the rest of us. I waited, still feeling weaker than I thought I should. Joe surged to close it. I kept waiting, hoping that one of the three other guys would close the gap to Joe now. By the time he was 25 meters up the road, I knew it was now or never, and I powered around Kevin and the two other guys. Joe and I linked up with Matt and from there on it was Matt doing most of the work. Joe contributed a few pulls, while I held on by a thread, nearly getting dropped a half dozen times as the undulating road followed the Ausable river into town.

Matt dropped off for an emergency bathroom break in the forest with two miles to go and I followed Joe the rest of the way into T2, feeling utterly spent. I’d been suffering enough to not really have any clue what was going on in the race up ahead, but as we ran our bikes through transition, I learned from Joe that we were 12 minutes behind the leader, which was almost unbelievable given the fact that Joe averaged 296, and he’d been riding in various groups virtually all day long (and getting the legal benefit of doing so). He and I were in 4th and 5th place, but the podium seemed an impossible feat given the huge gaps to 1st through 3rd. 

I told Joe good luck and he took off. I jogged the first few miles of the run, crippled with chest and side cramps until mile two. The cramps thankfully subsided, very gradually, but my legs weren’t in any better shape. My quads were wrecked. I looked at my watch and saw that I was running close to 8:30 pace. Matt passed me. Kevin blew by. Igor Amorelli passed, and I began thinking of dropping out. It was mile four, and if my legs were going to come around, it would have happened by now. I looked down at my pace and saw 9:00 on a flat section of road. I began calculating how long it would take to reach the finish at 9:00 pace. Probably more like 11:00 per mile when you add in walking at the end, I thought. After Tulsa, I knew that I didn’t have it in me to run/walk 20 miles. 

At mile five I pulled out.

Post Race Analysis

Unfortunately, the leaders on the bike took a huge advantage of being unfairly close behind the lead vehicle, despite this very issue being brought up and discussed at length during the pro briefing. However, any advantage that they took didn’t really have much of an effect on my race. I simply didn’t have it on the day. I screwed up at Tulsa by racing too aggressively. Lake Placid was a different story. Aside from the swim, I just felt like garbage, and only got by on the bike due to sheer stubbornness.

I have some thinking to do about how to approach training and racing for the rest of the summer. First step is to start working with a coach. Actually, the first step was getting my thyroid bloodwork done, which I did yesterday. I was hypothyroid, by a fair degree, which helps explain the lack of power on the bike and my inability to run off the bike. I suspected this might be a problem heading into the race simply because I’d been getting super cold during almost every swim this past month. 

I was good about getting tested throughout the winter, but stopped when I got to Boulder, thinking I had my medication dialed in and my Hashimoto’s was under control. It’s never under control. It has to be monitored monthly, especially when I’m putting in big hours of training. I guess this race was the reminder I needed.

The depression of having such a horrible race is nearing its end, and Boulder 70.3 is in a week and a half. I have almost no expectations, other than to simply come in top eight and post up a half decent race this year once and for all. After that (assuming I don’t get picked for the Collins Cup, which would require at least a podium at Boulder 70.3), I’ll take a short break before ramping back up for Ironman California at the end of October. 

*Ironman allows a 12 meter (six bike length) draft zone, which provides about 10 watts if you’re behind one rider, and around 40 watts if you’re last in a line of 10 riders. In terms of lead vehicles and media motos, I don’t think Ironman has any sort of gap standard between the vehicle and the rider, which is a problem because if it’s a car, you can still get a decent draft at 40 meters or more. The same is true of a motorcycle at 25 meters.