Pine Barrens race report

2011 Pine Barrens Spring Sprint Triathlon Race Report
May 20th, 2011

Background

Location: Atsion Recreation Area, Shamong, NJ
Distance: 0.5M swim/24.2 mile bike/4 mile run
2011 Triathlon Race Number: 5
Career Triathlon Race Number: 105
Conditions: Sunny and Pleasant. Low 70s. Light wind. 62-degree water.

This was to be my fourth “sprint” in 21 days. After a relatively benign wake-up at 5:45 am I made the 80-minute drive over to the race site. During the warm-ups I noticed that my legs felt tired and heavy. Not surprising given my recent racing schedule. Also, my left knee was very painful. It had been acting up for several weeks now and I’ve had to cut my run training back by 75% over the last few weeks. I thought there was a good chance after this race that I would have to take a break from running for a while until my knee stabilized.

Still, I was glad to be here and mentally ready to race. The prior week in Annapolis I had enjoyed one of the stronger races of my career—even turning in a decent run so I was hopeful to replicate some of that on this beautiful spring morning. This race couldn’t have been more different than Annapolis. That race was a first-time race with massive production value that had attracted a field of close to 900. Pine Barrens, in contrast, is a long-standing, old school race that managed to attract just 67 competitors on this fine morning—47 male and 20 female.

The Swim

Lake Atsion is a pleasant enough venue for a Jersey triathlon. It’s a cedar lake, with wine tinted waters but otherwise clean, clear and pleasant. At 62 degrees the water was perfect in my estimation. This was my eighth swim at this venue (5th sprint and also 3 Olys), and I knew the 0.5-mile advertised distance was a guess at best—there is a fair amount of variability (in my judgment) from year to year. I was hoping it would be long—which it tended to be in the past.

I was the 2nd oldest fellow in the 1st (male) wave—btw, with 67 folks; there should not be two waves! I had seen one guy in my AG who was 50 years old and looked pretty good. He had a P3 and was rubber-banding his shoes to his bike for a rapid T1. I didn’t like the looks of that as I was hoping for a relatively stress-free race with an easy AG victory—especially after the nail biter of last week. Whatever, I beat 35 people I didn’t know last week; I should be able to take this guy this morning—bad knee and all.

Given the small field, I thought it might be fun to try to score the best swim split. At the horn I went into a very hard 50-meter effort—I’ve been practicing going out fast and then recovering on the fly in my recent pool sessions. I had started on the buoy line, given my left-breathing tendencies and a clockwise course. However, a bunch of young Turks were inside the buoy line (Really? With 67 people?) and two of them were right there with me sitting on my (blind) right shoulder. Also, I could see two guys moving out smartly on the left.

The guys to my right seemed very intent on vectoring left straight away and so I had the two of them crashing into me shortly into the race. We have about 400 yards until the first turn and you guys have to cut left right away? I find this stuff annoying but I’ve learned to sit-up, let them pass, and then continue on my straight path to the turn buoy, so this is what I did.

I could see the two guys on the left were very strong swimmers and with my extracurriculars they had opened up a bit (5-10 yards) of a gap on me. The two wayward Turks seemed content to keep hitting each other and I made the early call that I could out-swim them and put a surge on at about 150 yards in. I looked behind me and saw quite a gap to the rest of the field.

My strategy appeared to be working as I pulled steadily away from the Turks but I was slowly dropping back against the pace of the two leaders. I rounded the first turn buoy about 20 seconds down from the first two guys and with a good 10+ yards on the guys behind me. The 2nd turn came soon thereafter and we were heading back east into a strong glare off the lake.

Before the race, I had determined that the one buoy between the 2nd and 3rd (final) turn buoy was not lined up well so I tried as best as I could to sight to the far turn buoy. This was difficult, but I could tell I was doing a much better job than the two fellows in front of me. They had vectored right towards the interim buoy, definitely travelling a longer course than I. Hmmmm—maybe I could catch them. I glanced back and saw I was safely in 3rd so I decided to go for it. I was aware that my HR was higher than normal, it wasn’t unpleasant but I sensed I was racing about as hard as I ever do in a triathlon swim.

Soon the two in front of me discovered the errors of their ways and veered pretty violently back to the left. Soon they crossed my (direct) line and now were heading off course to the left. Whatever—someday perhaps they’ll learn to swim straight. Unfortunately, their fitness was not on a par with their navigational skills and so I was not able to appreciably narrow the gap.

I swam strong all the way to the beach and exited the water 3rd, just 27 seconds behind the leader. My swim split was 14:14 and my HR averaged 155bpm (which is about as high as I ever record in a triathlon swim). This turns out to be my second fastest on this course (although as I mentioned, I’m not sure how comparable these swims really are:

2004—17:56
2005—15:53
2006—16:44
2010—13:58
2011—14:14

In any event, 2010 was a real strong swim for me as well, so irrespective of the distance, I’m very satisfied with the swim. Strangely enough, 3 of the 20 women in race were faster than us guys so I ended up recording only 6th fastest swim OA (92.5 %-tile). Since, I wasn’t aware of this, let me report on the race as I saw it: here are the overall standings after the swim:

1. Mellinger --------
2. Bradley + 0:05
3. Christofferson + 0:27
4. Robinson + 0:34
5. Islieb + 0:38

As for my AG, I turned in a pretty dominating swim. Here is where we stood in that competition:

1. Christofferson --------
2. Markowitz + 3:58
3. Lee + 4:50

Transition One

I could see the two guys in front of me as I pushed as hard as I could into T1. I wanted to stay close, hoping that I might be faster on the bike and maybe, just maybe grab the overall lead. This was probably wishful thinking but what the hey! I could see that one of the guys (Bradley) was struggling with his wetsuit and I figured I could pass him straight away. However, the 26 YO, Mellinger was soon on his way even as I still had my bib-johns on. Still, I thought I did a decent job in T1 and my total time was 1:34 (avg HR of 173 bpm!). This turned out to be the 9th fastest overall and the fastest of my AG. Here is where we stood after T1:

1. Mellinger --------
2. Christofferson + 0:42
3. Dunne + 0:49
4. Islieb + 0:54
5. Robinson + 1:08


In my AG:

1. Christofferson --------
2. Markowitz + 4:02
3. Lee + 5:16

The Bike

As I headed out of the park I was intent on catching Mellinger and began to push it hard straight away. However, very soon (less than a mile) Dunne made up the 7 seconds on me, on his way to an incredible bike ride and a dominating race victory. Darn! This was a little deflating but I was still in 3rd so I was very much motivated to ride hard.

It was a good, fast day to ride. I felt pretty good—not 100%. My legs didn’t have that “snap, crackle, pop” but I still felt like I was doing OK. A couple of more riders caught me between miles 3 and 8. I reflected on how unusual it used to be for anyone that I could outswim, would then in turn out-bike me. With the ascendency of my swim and the apparent, albeit modest decline in my bike, this seemed to be something that was now more common.

I also reflected on I’ve always done surprisingly “poorly” on the bike here and I’ve concluded there are two reasons—both related to the 24-mile race distance. First, this long bike leg (relative to the swim and run) tends to attract the really strong bikers (who might avoid the 10-12 mile bike tris) and even though the bike is clearly my strongest suit, there always seem to be a few mondo bikers here—like Dunne—who are seeking out the unusually long bike leg. Second, the long bike leg scares away a lot of weaker bikers who might have signed up for a more traditional sprint—this of-course affects my relative of %-tile ranking. So, ironically, despite my bike being my strength, all of the bikes that I have won outright have been 10-12 mile bike courses and my highest %-tile finishes are also concentrated in these shorter races. (Of-course, another explanation is I’m more of a shorter distance biker, but I’m guessing that is not the correct explanation).

In any event, another fellow passed me shortly before the turn at mile 10 (dropping me to 6th) and he just kept going. I yelled at him and he figured out that he had missed the turn. Good Karma for me! Bad mess-up for him because he was the fellow who had won the Olympic race the prior fall and he should have known the course.

Throughout the rest of the bike, I seemed to be holding steady or even gaining on a couple of guys in front of me. The errant course manager soon passed me again and I noticed when he caught the guys in front of him around 15 miles that they seemed to pull away a bit. I’m not saying they were drafting but it was probably to their benefit to work together and pace off of each other. I saw no one else over the final 14 miles of the ride—what a contrast to Annapolis!
The other thing I noticed was that I seemed to be well under a one hour pace! I have never broken 60 minutes in my prior 6 rides on this course here and it looked like today might be the day. However, I was puzzled by my average wattage, which was only mid/high 250s—I would have thought I needed to push more like 265-270 to break 60. The other thing I began to wonder about was whether my odometer was giving me bad data. During warm-ups it seemed a bit flaky but I though it was reading low mileage—which it can do when the signal is weak. However, for me to be getting too high of an average speed, my odometer had to be reading too high—something that I think is pretty much impossible.

As I neared the end of the ride, it became increasingly clear that I was not going to break 60 minutes and that I was indeed getting bad odometer and average speed data. Darn! None-the-less, I had a pretty decent bike, given my fatigue and I recorded a 61:56 split with an average HR of 164. (23.3 mph average). Here is how that stacks up against past rides*:

2005 Sprint----60:05
2003 Olympic—60:25
2006 Sprint----61:44
2011 Sprint----61:56 (259 watts/164 bpm)
2004 Sprint----62:05
2010 Sprint----62:58 (251 watts/158 bpm)
2009 Olympic—64:43 (230 watts/158 bpm)

* Note: I also rode the Olympic in 2010 but the course was different—2 miles shorter. In that race I averaged 230 watts and an average HR of 160. For the 4 races I have power/HR data—2011 was my strongest.

My average power for the ride was 259 watts and I recorded an average cadence of 83 rpm.

I knew, despite the odometer challenges that I had a pretty solid bike ride. I knew I was in 6th OA and 1st in my AG. As I rode through the parking lot, I could see the 3 guys immediately in front of me wrapping up their T2 activities. I didn’t know how much of a lead I had in my AG but I suspected that it was enough. Here is where we stood in the AG after the bike:

1. Christofferson --------
2. Markowitz + 7:22
3. Lee +14:16

Transition Two

I hurried through transition in 46 seconds with an average HR of 160 bpm. I thought it was a decent T2 but was only good enough for 21st best OA. I picked up time on my AG competitors and through T2 I was the fastest of my AG at every stage in the race:

1. Christofferson --------
2. Markowitz + 7:32
3. Lee +14:40

The Run

As I headed out of T2 I couldn’t see the 7th place guy so I knew I had a bit of a gap. The RD confirmed I was in 6th. My legs, in sharp contrast to last week, felt heavy and lifeless right away. I kept pushing hoping that a bit of running would clear that up. After about 3-4 minutes of running I could tell that I had nothing in the tank from a running perspective. My knee issues and four weeks of limited running seemed to finally be catching up to me.

Oh well. I had 4 miles to trudge through. I wanted to seal the deal on my AG win and see if I could hold on to a top 10 overall. I knew with respect to the latter that I could let one person pass me per mile. I focused on this latter goal to try to motivate myself to push on. I had a “conversation” with my father and asked him to send me a little extra energy.

I closed in on the first mile and heard footsteps at the same time. I was passed right at the 1st mile marker and I recorded a mile split of 8:19 (164 bpm). I was about 45 seconds per mile slower than last week. Part of this may be due to the trail running nature of this run—although the first mile is not really that bad. At 164 bpm, I also had confirmation that it was my leg weariness that was my limiting factor.

Right before and after the two-mile mark I had two more guys go by me dropping me to 9th…oh-oh. My 2nd mile split was 8:10 with an average HR of 166. Now I was on the infamous Pine Barrens sand stretch—about a half-mile of very loose sand. The going was slow here and the uneven terrain was murder on my knee, which was complaining loudly—this was the most pain I can ever remember from my knee in a race—not good.

At the end of the sandy stretch another fellow passed me and I was now 10th, with a good 1.25-1.5 miles to go. I tried to pick it up but my 3rd mile split was only 8:46/164 bpm. At this point in the course, there is an out and back section and I could see that I had a sizeable gap on the next runner so I relaxed a bit and tried to smooth it on home. My last mile passed in 8:08/166 and I finished the run with an elapsed time of 33:23.

This was my slowest (of five) run on this course and a full two minutes slower than last year. I probably “should” (no knee issues) be able to run this a full 3 minutes faster than I did (if I had, I would have finished 6th). As it stands, I finished 10th OA (86.6 %-tile). AG-wise, I was only 12 seconds slower than Markowitz on the run and my overall time of 1:51:47 was good enough for a 7+ minute AG victory. My time was 47 seconds slower than last year, but 2 seconds faster than 2006 and two and a half minutes faster than 2004.

Post-Race

A win is a win. Number 30 for me and two in a row in 2011. A nice solid swim/bike combo but my run and knee are now officially, the first major issue of this season. I’m going to have to take an extended break or seek help from my ortho to get my knee problem “fixed” well enough so I can train again. I have lots of time before IMAZ so I’m hopeful I can do this. Clearly my heavy short-course racing calendar will need some modification…. You can’t always get what you want, but hopefully I’ll be able to get what I need!