Presidential Lakes Olympic Race Report

Presidential Lakes Olympic Triathlon
Race Report Number 6: 6/13/2010


Background

Three weeks in front of IM Germany and with a weather forecast calling for brutal conditions I decided to opt out of Eagleman (which turned out to be a solid decision). I wanted to race to maintain my sharpness so I opted for this race at the last minute.

I drove the 80 or so miles north to Pemberton, NJ for the premier of this new Olympic race. I didn’t know what to expect competition wise but it appeared it would be a smallish field.

Race morning was hot and humid with little wind. The temp would climb to 91 degrees by the end of the race in a cloudless sky. More like July conditions than mid-June.

I did not taper for this race—not wanting to interrupt my IM training but I did not have as much training in the week before this race as I had the prior week before Jersey Genesis and I expected that I would be able to go a bit harder today.

The Swim

The swim was a two-lap course that seemed to be accurately measured. I hopped in the water with the rest of the over 40 males who comprised the second wave. The course was mostly left turns (which I prefer) and I set up on the outside so I could keep an eye on the tactical situation. Some guy with a snorkel (Really?) lined up next to me.

At the gun I surged ahead and then backed off and tried to immediately settle into my IM pace. I wanted to cruise at that pace today even though I knew I could go a bit faster. It seemed like a good dress rehearsal for Germany. Snorkel man and several other folks were ahead of me but I could see I was pulling away from the vast majority of the field.

I felt strong and very comfortable and just steadily made my way around the course and exited the water at the end of my first lap in 11:46 with my HR averaging 151 bpm—very comfortable effort. I ran around the lifeguard chair and then proceeded to repeat another drama free lap. The second lap was a bit slower (12:13 with an average HR of 155) so I completed the swim in 23:59 with an average HR of 153 bpm.

I was very pleased with both the time and the ease of the effort and I assumed that I had the lead in my AG. Little did I know that Ken Lehner had entered at the last minute. Ken is a very strong New Jersey triathlete—a perennial All-American whom is out of my league from a competitive standpoint. The last time I raced him was at Sunset in 2005 where he was 7:03 faster than me over a half-mile swim!!!! Today was a bit of a moral victory as I was 3:40 behind him. I was second out of eight in my AG and 10th out of 107 OA (91.6 %-tile). Here are the AG standings after the swim:

1. Lehner --------
2. Christofferson + 3:40
3. Strauss + 4:25
4. Vlacich +10:03
5. Lee +12:48

Transition One

I promptly completed my T1 in 2:10 with an average HR of 166 bpm. This was the 2nd fastest in the AG (to Lehner again) and I was 22nd OA. I jumped on my bike blissfully unaware that I was almost 4 minutes behind.


The Bike

After last week’s poor bike performance, I was interested in producing a better power output today. My legs were tired but with “only” 241 miles in my legs this week versus the 300+ of the prior week I thought I had a reasonable chanced to do so.

The course was a twisty turny run-out of a mile and a half or so out to a 3 loop course of a relatively flat and well-paved road. With the turns in the run-out (and back-in) and the 6 180 degree turns during the laps I knew this would not be a real fast course and I knew my average power would be effected as well due to the technical nature of the course. It also turned out that the bike course was long at 26.1 miles, which I can only attribute to sloppy course set-up.

I felt pretty good all things considered and passed a fair number of people each lap. I did get passed by one young fellow (Reitinger) whom had started in the wave before me but I had significantly out swum—he blew past me on his way to the best bike split overall.

My ride was uneventful and I ended up cruising the 26.1 miles in 67:07 at an average HR of 156. This works out to be a pedestrian 23.3 mph although on a less turny course I’m sure I would have been over 24 mph today. Power wise I averaged 241 watts, which is marginally acceptable given my training load. My average rpms were 79.

Competitively I had the 4th fastest bike split OA (97.2 %-tile) and I had the fastest split in our AG putting a solid 2:45 on Lehner. Five years ago I was 17 seconds faster on a 16-mile course so I guess there is good news in this comparative data. Anyways, here is where we stood after the bike:

1. Lehner --------
2. Christofferson + 1:12
3. Strauss +11:32
4. Lee +19:28
5. Vlacich +25:19

Transition Two

I moved very quickly through T2 with an elapsed time of 1:03 and an average HR of 152 bpm. This was one second slower than Vlacich but faster than the rest of the AG. I even picked up 9 seconds on Lehner and was just 63 seconds behind him with the run to come. In fact, I was now in 4th place in the OA race—of course, I did not know any of this.

The Run

So to quickly kill the suspense, Lehner is normally a 40-minute 10K runner in Olympics (he is a 2:08-2:12 Olympic distance triathlete). I didn’t know Ken was in the race but if I had I would not have spent even one second worrying about catching him.

I felt tired, thirsty and dead-legged right from the start. It occurred to me that I hadn’t really given any thought to nutrition—basically treated this race like I would a sprint—and I only had one bottle of fluid and no other source of energy—I would soon learn that this was a mistake.

The run was partially on paved roads and partially on a soft sandy forest road. It was quite flat. It was very hot and the sun was beating down. I have no idea how long the run was but I have to believe that in addition to me being very slow today that the run was long. I ended up taking 54:10 to complete the run. My average HR was only 162 bpm as I bonked a bit about 2/3rds of the way through the run. Lehner only ran 47:50 so the heat and length of the run probably affected everybody—in fact, only one person broke 40 today and only 10 broke 45. I was 3rd in my AG and a dismal 52nd overall.

I ended up the race in 2:28:30, about seven minutes behind Lehner and 11:32 in front of Strauss. I would have won the 45-49 AG by about nine minutes—oh well. Overall I finished 17th (85th %-tile). Not the best of races but I’ll take it considering everything.