May 24th, 2008. Training Update, U23 Worlds, Swimming @ Walden:

Only 2 weeks until Worlds! The time has absolutely flown by lately. It seems like just last week there was snow on the ground and I was stuck in my basement on the trainer. My fun experience in Chula Vista feels like a blur now. I’ve put in the work over the past 6 months and now it’s time to have faith in my coaching and myself. These next 2 weeks I’m simply going to work on getting maximum sleep, doing some sharpening up workouts, and mentally visualizing the race.

Yesterday Jarrod and I met at Fastsplits to do a group ride with some heavy hitters from Team Psyco, 70.3 star Richie Cunningham, and triathlon Goddess Karen Smyers. We pushed the pace a little but mostly it was fun. Jarrod and I hammered on the way back through Wellesley and Newton. It was cool to ride in new territory. Earlier in the week Jarrod and I ripped out some crazy fast 300s on the track and then followed it up with some quick 1000s. I’m feeling ready to run sub-32 in Vancouver… Hmmm, what else for training this week? Last night we had a pretty tough swim workout with Rich. We basically had a 600 meter warm-up and then began to hit it pretty hard from there. Grand total was a little over 5000 meters. My shoulder had been really sore earlier in the week from my wetsuit swim at Memphis in May, but it gradually got better every day and I was ready to go last night.

We had an open water swim at Walden today. Water is still freezing to me but it is warming up. I lasted about 50 minutes and then took some cell-phone video of Jarrod and Alicia finishing up:

Some locals

Post-workout ice bath

May 21st, 2008 Memphis in May Race Report: My Bad Luck is Running Out. After dealing with a streak of very bad luck in my last 4 major races, I had a slight improvement this morning at the Memphis in May triathlon, only experiencing minor bad luck. I finished in 4th place in 1:49:05 after getting a one-minute stand down penalty on the bike for violating a staggering rule. I thought it was a bit of a ridiculous call – I was told to stop for one minute by the head official because apparently I was not staggered one meter to the left or the right of the rider ahead who was a good quarter mile (30-40 seconds) up the road!!! Seriously?! I’m like 20 draft zones behind him and could barely even see him! These stagger rules are sketchy. Now on to the race report:

The Memphis in May triathlon is set up as a pure time trial. The professional athletes leave 10 seconds apart. It makes things interesting and strategic. I was number 7. There was no number 1, so I would be started 6th, 50 seconds after the first athlete. The swim was wetsuit legal. I was really nervous beforehand and was glad when I got to the starting line to finally get things rolling. I got off to smooth start, not going out too hard. As I got warmed up I started to feel better and picked up the pace. I began making up major ground on the guys who started in front of me. About halfway through the swim I had caught all but one person. I exited the water in 2nd place and had a quick transition onto my brand new BMC TT bike.

The bike course is flat and fast, however, it was windy. I didn’t want to go out too hard and got into a nice rhythm. On long straight-aways I could see the rider in front of me leading the race. It seemed to me that I wasn’t really gaining or losing any ground to him, so I kept on hammering in 2nd place. About 10 miles into the bike a motorcycle pulls up next to me and I’m told to “Stand down!”. I obey not wanting to lose any more time than necessary but was completely puzzled as to what I did wrong. I asked the official what was up and he told me that I wasn’t staggered with the guy up ahead. “I can barely see him!”, I protested but this dude didn’t really seem to care. So I stood there. It seemed like forever. Two riders go flying by me. Agony! I can’t describe how awful it is to see your competition go roaring past you when there’s nothing you can do about it. A third rider goes by. When will this end! “3-2-1”, the race official counts down the end of my penalty dramatically. As soon as the penalty is up I go taking off back down the road. I contemplated dropping out – I thought I was completely out of the race and didn’t see many reasons to continue. I knew at this point some of the weaker swimmer/good biker guys would be catching up. I was right – Ben Hoffman came by me on his Specialized and not too long later Andrew Starykowicz passed me as well. So I went from 2nd to 7th, although that place didn’t really matter due to the TT start, but nevertheless it was demoralizing to be so close to the front only to stop and get passed by several of your competitors. As this point I was getting uncomfortable in my TT position and wasn’t generating a whole lot of power. I just got my TT bike this week and have a long way to go before I feel completely comfortable on it. I was glad to re-enter the state park and head into transition.

I went into t2 and then took off onto the hot, hilly, out-and-back run course. My legs felt pretty terrible at first, and I again contemplated dropping out and saving my energy for another day. But I pressed on. I caught one the strong bikers who passed me within the first mile of the run. My legs were burning on the hills and I was taking cold water at almost every aid station. Around 1.5 miles I began to see a couple more guys up ahead. I was still feeling awful at this point, but I could tell that I was slowly making up some ground on them. I just kept muscling my way through hoping my legs would start to feel better. I got a good look at where everybody was at the turnaround. There is a big hill that you run up and then right back down at the halfway mark. Once I came back down my legs started turning over better. My stride seemed to smoothen itself out so I pushed the pace a little bit more. I passed Ben Hoffman, and then a couple more guys. I was rolling at this point and just tried to push it as much as I could in order to gain maximal time over my competitors. The final half mile was on grass. I tried to push it more and more as the finish line came into view. I was the third person to cross the line, and ended up 4th overall. The penalty I received probably knocked me out of 2nd place.

When I realized that I had still gotten a top-5 finish I was less mad. In fact, I’m pretty happy with how well I finished despite receiving that penalty and basically being knocked out of the race mentally for a while. I was glad that I found my running legs on the 2nd half of the run and was able to run my way back into the race. (I had the 2nd fastest run split in 33:52). It seems like I learn something new at every race I do, and I can be certain that I will not make this same mistake ever again.