Parade of Nations (click for more sweet pics from down under!)
The race always starts well before the gun goes off. This race started with a decision to reply “yes” to USA triathlon after my top ten finish at Nationals, a day before the deadline to accept a spot on Team USA for the Sprint World Championship Triathlon. Putting my life on hold to go to the other side of the world for two weeks with a month’s notice was not good for my professional life, my home life, my finances, and many other mundane trinkets that I slave away to appease. Instead it was another testament that the hobby I adopted in an attempt to better myself merely traded my priorities and my vices. It was fuel for the fire that burns inside and illuminates the things in life that give me thrills and ignite my passion. So just as I trade golf with the boss for laps in the pool and date night with the nice Midwest girl that enjoys books for towing my sweaty mates up to the breakaway, I pushed ‘send’ and began to practice how I’d dance like an Aboriginal warrior around that fire… bones in my nipples and all!
mingling with the locals
So there I was! Standing behind the white line of tape stretched across the beach with fifty-five other world champion wannabees. It’s interesting to reflect what goes through one’s mind in a moment like that. Ever since pressing ‘send’ I had told myself that this was about the experience. It was about living life to the fullest and making my crazy dreams reality. It was about traveling around the world and sharing an apartment with a bunch of strangers. It was about sleeping under my bike bag on the beach if that didn’t work out. It was about not having a single plan once I got off the plane… just a bike, a wetsuit, running shoes and flip flops. It was about the adventure I told myself… because I’m not that fast.
But it’s funny how that mentality has a way of disappearing on the starting line. I’m a racer. That’s why I do this. Even though I had convinced myself that racing was the vehicle that got me where I wanted to go… when I looked down the line at the fastest thirty year old men in world… I wanted to beat their asses! And all that cool stuff I had been thinking about wasn’t there. What was there? “I’m fast,” I told myself. “I feel lean. I feel powerful. I want a piece of this thing!”
“Males age 30 to 34 to the line… Are you ready…. GO!” And we’re off, three strides and we’re in the water…. Shallow water. Knee deep water for several meters. I made about five dolphin dives (pulling my feet to my hands in the sand the springing out of the water forward into a streamline) until the water was deep enough to swim and then joined the white water pack thrashing toward the first buoy. Now, normally in triathlon this pack stretches out and soon enough you find yourself either stroking at your own pace or drafting back and forth with a few other racers of similar ability. Well… in the world championships everyone is good and in a short race, there’s no time to string out. You’re either in the pack or off the back and I was fighting and kicking and bumping and getting elbows in my face the whole way…. Up current to boot!
I got out of the water smack dab in the middle of the pack which is exactly what I expected. I was fine with that since, as Col Dean Vitale told me, my bike is a weapon. I’m in the best cycling shape of my life right now, in fact, my running and swimming has suffered from all my time on the bike lately. So I felt confident I’d get ahead of the pack. What I didn’t know until they passed me going the other way on the out and back, two loop course was that there was a break away in the swim of guys that exited about 1:30 ahead of the pack. That coupled with my inability to get my right foot out of my wetsuit without using my hands put me about two minutes behind.
Now this was supposed to be a non-drafting race. BUT… people were drafting like crazy and that didn’t benefit me at all. I soon dropped everyone around me from the swim and found myself soloing to catch the lead group of riders who had coagulated with some younger racers from the 25-29 age group (that started three minutes before us) to form a peloton of about a dozen speedsters. Everyone I caught was slower than me so I just pedaled right by (OK I did take a couple three second slipstream rests) But the leaders were booking it and despite my best effort and a great personal bike split, I couldn’t close the gap… not even close. So I skidded up to the dismount line about 2:30 back and somewhere in the top 15-20.
This is where I wish I could say my sweet running skills put me in a position to reel in the leaders. But in reality this is where my race got ugly… as is usually the case. It started as I unclipped my helmet with one hand and racked my bike with the other. Apparently ITU officials care much more about running with your helmet unbuckled off the bike then they do about drafting on bike because the ref made me un-rack my bike, put my helmet back on and buckled, re-rack my bike then sent me on my way. I estimate this took about twenty seconds, which had I been in contention for a podium could have made all the difference. But I wasn’t at this point so I just cussed him out in my head, slipped my shoes and race belt on and headed out of T2.
Have I mentioned yet that I suck at running? Because I do! However I’ve been putting in the effort on the track this year, dropped a few pounds and I’ve gotten faster. I had good confidence coming off the Nationals race in July with a PR 5k (19:10 or 6:10 min/mile pace off the bike with a ½ mile beach run and gnarly hill). On top of that I ran the Aquathlon earlier in the week and cruised around 5:45 pace without going all out. Now I know that this is not nearly World Champ fast, but it’s good for me. And I told myself that as I crossed over the pedestrian bridge lined with people and cameras heading out of the transition. In fact, I felt great… until about mile one. Then I felt like I was going to vomit. I recovered and pushed again. Same result. Now I’ve had my share of GI distress during runs… and this wasn’t one of them. I just simply didn’t have the wind to feed my legs the oxygen they needed. Maybe it was week’s worth of sleepless, jet-lagged nights. Maybe not enough tapering, maybe both and more… who knows. All I know for sure is that I couldn’t run as fast as I wanted to and when the leaders from the 35-39 group (who started three minutes behind me) passed me like I was going backwards at the halfway point, I realized how bad my run was going. At that point I really didn’t want to hear the “come on US! Go get ‘em USA!” cheers because I didn’t feel like I was representing the country very well. That was my darkest moment of the race. But luckily exercise is better than Prozac and as I started to get my wind back I thought, “You know, I’m running down the coast in Australia at the World Championships… F@ck it! Let’s go!” From then on I was able to pick up the pace and as I rounded the corner into the long finisher’s chute the Team USA coach handed me a little American flag on a stick and I sprinted with it down the line feeling like hero. It was great for about twelve nanoseconds until I started dry heaving after crossing the line. One of the other races asked if I was OK and I repeated the words of wisdom from one of my roommates, “If you ain’t puking you ain’t trying” That might be one of the only times an Australian thought Americans are wild that I know of.
slow or fast the local kids thought we were cool
All in all my run still sucked at 20:25 (6:34 pace) but it was far from the difference between a top ten or not. Most of us (when we don’t win) look back at what went wrong. It’s hard not to wonder how you would’ve stacked up if everything went right. I’m no different. If I ran what I have run recently and removed my transition screw ups and penalty, I probably would have gone about two minutes faster. Still nowhere close to the podium. That didn’t surprise me and in the end it wasn’t all about that anyway. It was about the experience and what an awesome one it was! Budapest can be about the podium! Cheers!
Pedal Fast!
Jason
