Bassman International
Race Report
May 5th,
2013
Background
Location:
Bass River State Forest, NJ
Distance:
0.6-mile swim/29.8-mile bike/5.2-mile run
2013
Triathlon Race Number: 3
Career
Triathlon Race Number: 129
Conditions:
Cold and breezy (10-15 mph), around 42 degrees at the race start and 48 by the
end. Overcast with heavy, laden skies. Clear lake swim with water temp around 62
degrees.
This was
to be my third triathlon of 2013 and the “official” start of my “regular”
season, having completed two “pre-season” races in late March and early
April. Early week forecasts proved
optimistic as race morning greeted us with raw and uninviting conditions.
I was
competing in the International race, which was being held in conjunction with a
Sprint and a Half-Iron distance race (plus numerous aquabikes, duathlons and
relays). There were 120 starters in the
International race and there were just 7 guys in my 55-59 YO AG. In fact, there were only two guys older than
me entered in the race.
The field
in my AG did not look particularly deep but I did have my eye on Tom Senff and
Ted Maglione. I had raced each 7 times
before besting Tom 4 times and Ted all 7.
I expected to win this race with it’s bike heavy composition as I have won
this AG race all three times I had entered prior (albeit, back in 2005, 2006
and 2008).
The race
is run by a nice RD from City Tri.
Unfortunately, his style is a bit loosey-goosey and the race distance
and courses were changed just 4 days before the race (swim from 0.5 to 0.6
miles, bike from 29 to an advertised 29.9 miles, and the run from 4.4 to a
claimed 5.1 miles). The start time
actually changed 3 times in the final two days as well. Not surprisingly, there was a bunch of
confusion getting things going race morning and we ended up starting 38 minutes
late.
None of
this bothered me as one comes to expect this from City Tri. I actually was rather worry-free race morning
as I definitely viewed it as a “C” race and I trained right up to the race (I
also had a busy travel week going to Washington and Boston). I felt in reasonable shape despite my later
start to training this season, but I felt a bit under the weather over the 2-3
days leading up to the race. I
definitely was not in “A” game status.
The big
news for this race was my first attempt at riding my new BMC TT01. I only had about 60 miles on it and I was no
where near comfortable yet with the fit so I didn’t know how it would work for
29+ hard race miles. Anyways, after the
sprint guys went off, soon enough we waded into the chilly water to begin our
contest.
The Swim
The
ladies went first and the 40+ guys followed 3 minutes later in Wave Two. There weren’t that many of us so I decided to
line up on the buoy-line as this was a clockwise box swim course. This would allow me to keep the field in view
as I breathed on my preferred left side.
At the
start I veered a bit right to avoid any congestion but this soon proved to be
an unnecessary precaution. The field
spaced out relatively quickly. Quite a
few folks were ahead of me, which for some reason I didn’t register as an
issue. I knew there were some strong 40+
competitors (such as former pro Scott Duprex) so I guess I wasn’t alarmed to
have so many people swim away from me.
The water
temp turned out to be fine—pleasant in fact once under way. I settled into a comfortable rhythm right
away. I enjoy swimming in this lake (I
think it’s the best I’ve ever swam in—in New Jersey anyways). I had a completely uneventful swim—no drama
and I felt well within my fitness envelope the whole way.
In
retrospect, this was probably a mistake as I think I just took it way to easy
on this swim—the reason I felt so good was because I was lolly-gagging! My
total elapsed time for the swim was 17:11.
One way of evaluating the swim is to compare my swim at Bassman to
my swim last year at Rumpass, which was on April 15th last year:
Rumpass 2012 Bassman
2013
GPS
Distance 0.59 miles 0.60 miles
Time 13:52 17:11
Pace 23:27/mile 28:38/mile
Stroke
Rate 37/min 36/min
Strokes 513 612
Distance/Stroke 2.024 yds 1.725
yds
OA %-tile 84.9 % 71.7 %
Now, I
will say that I do think the numbers in 2012 exaggerate my swim performance—I
noted in my race report from last year that I didn’t think the course was
really the 949 meters my GPS measured but I knew it was definitely longer than
the 750 meters advertised. As for
Bassman this year, it looked visually pretty close—I estimated 0.6-0.7 miles
before the start of the race and my GPS had it dead on 0.6 miles (as
advertised). In any event, this was a
very slack effort on my part—well under my fitness I believe—I’ll need to bring
a little bit more game to my future swims this year for sure!
Not
surprisingly, my competitive performance was nothing to get excited about. I was 35th OA (71.7 %-tile) and a
disappointing 3rd in my AG.
Here is where my AG stood after the swim:
1. Senff --------
2. Cassimatis +
0:22
3. Christofferson + 0:33
4. Stahl +
0:55
5. Hanrahan +
5:00
It would
appear after the swim that it was a four-man race, but as we shall see, that
was not the case…
Transition One
Blissfully
unaware. That’s the best way to describe
my state of mind in T1. Of course I was
hoofing it as best as my aged body could but I assumed that I had the best swim
and that I would soon put some hurt on the bike.
Despite
my ill-placed confidence, I did in fact
manage to execute my transition very efficiently in a total time of 3:50,
during which I covered 0.18 miles. This
probably appears quite slow, but the transition area is very extended at
Bassman. Further, I felt it appropriate
to don a bike jacket given the temperature and I also took the precaution of
bringing spare tubes and repair stuff, which I put in the jacket. Despite all of this, my relative performance
supports a strong T1 on this morning. I
was 25th OA (80.0 %-tile) and first in my AG (my AG did not
distinguish itself in T1). In fact,
after passing the timing mat at the exit of the bike rack area and running the
lengthy distance across the sand to the mount line, I was surprised to see
Senff in front of me and I passed him and left T1 in first place. However, the official results—back at the
racks—had us in the following order after T1:
1. Senff --------
2. Christofferson + 0:14
3. Stahl +
1:23
4. Cassimatis +
2:44
5. Maglione +
5:51
The Bike
I was
very aware of Senff mounting right behind me and I was determined to quickly
pull away from him on the bike. I felt
pretty good right from the start and with a strong tailwind I was pleased with
my initial sensation of pace.
I was
soon out of the park and then at the fork made the left turn out onto the first
(sprint) loop. I felt ok during this
initial phase but when I checked my average power early on I didn’t like what I
saw. I set my Edge 800 to give me splits
every 2 miles—here is what the first three splits looked like:
2: 241
watts avg/242 watts NP/22.4 mph/80rpm/161bpm
4:
227/228/23.2/82/159
6:
230/232/22.1/85/158
At mile 6
I was settled in and my cadence was up in my target zone. However, I could tell that all was not right
in bikeland. I was real antsy on my new
stead and I began to become aware of discomfort in my neck and upper
shoulders. I could also feel discomfort
in my arms and I had trouble trying to keep from sliding too far forward on my
seat. My power numbers were
disappointing and I felt like I was getting passed by folks I wouldn’t normally
expect to get passed by. Yuch—and I had
24 more miles to go!
The next
6 miles were similar and if anything, worse:
8:
229/232/21.0/81/155
10:
232/234/21.4/81/156
12:
235/239/20.8/81/156
During
the last split, I made the U-turn back at the State Forrest and I was able to
see that Senff was about 1:50 behind me.
I ran the math and figured I’d be able to open up 5 minutes on him in
the bike—this was good—almost certainly good enough, but frankly less than I
expected. By this point my upper body
was hating my new bike and I knew that today would be a very challenging day
for sure. I soldiered on fully aware
that my bike was going to be a major disappointment.
The next
6 miles was predominately on the Half-Ironman loop. During this section my back/shoulder/neck
pain intensified and I had to sit up quite a bit. My bike numbers continued to suffer:
14:
228/229/21.8/81/153
16: 221/223/22.6/79/151
18:
243/245/21.8/81/154
As you
might surmise by looking at the last split, I tried to rally a bit between
miles 16 and 18. I was aware that I was
now firmly mired in a really poor bike split and I tried to shake myself out of
it. I was a little worried competitively
and when I saw Senff I estimated that my lead was only around 2:45. As I contemplated this I concluded that I
would still have a big enough lead coming into T2 to be able to likely prevail
but that relatively speaking, my race was unfolding quite poorly.
I tried
to keep negative thoughts out of my brain as I headed back on the out and back
and then rejoined the sprint course for the final portion of the bike. The next six miles:
20:
227/230/21.0/82/154
22:
223/226/21.8/82/150
24: 220/221/22.2/81/150
As we
headed back towards transition I was fortunate enough to engage in a duel with
a 49 YO and this led to more effort on my part and a modest reversal of the
downward trend evidenced above. This was
important because the last 6 miles were back mostly into a strong head wind:
26:
236/240/21.5/82/152
28:
236/240/21.5/83/155
29.8:
234/237/19.4/80/153
I finished the bike with an
elapsed split of 1:22:23, which works out to a pedestrian 21.7 mph. Yuch!
I had the 19th fastest bike split overall, which was just 85.0
%-tile. My average power was an OK 232
watts and my NP came in at 234 watts. My
cadence averaged 81 rpm and my HR 155bpm.
So how to
evaluate this ride? A number of
observations:
My power
output was not a total disaster. At 232
watts I was just 3.33% off the 240 watts I recorded here in 2008—the only other
ride here that I have power data from.
However, in 2008 I averaged 23.0 mph.
If everything else was equal, given this years power output, I would
have expected to average 1.1% slower or 22.7 mph or I should have been 57
seconds faster today. Now my RR from
2008 indicates that it was rainy and very windy then—perhaps, even worse than
this morning. So it’s hard to read too
much into this comparison.
Interestingly,
in 2008 I averaged 150bpm in generating my 240 watts while today I averaged 232
watts with a 155bpm HR. Clearly I had to
work harder this morning. Another
interesting data point is the low 81 rpm cadence. Normally, I’m right around 85 rpm. Perhaps these pieces of data reflect my
struggle to find a comfortable position during this ride and by sitting up I
became less aero, grinded more than spun, and while I was still able to produce
reasonable power, I had to work too hard for it and I was slower than I should
have been. What this would mean is that
my new bike as it is configured is considerably slower for me than my old
bike. It certainly felt that way!
Another
way to assess this ride is to compare to others in the field. Here are my OA %-tile numbers from the 4
times I’ve done this race:
2005:
85.0
2006:
94.0
2008:
93.6
2013:
85.0
Compared
to most Jersey Shore races these are all low numbers for me. I believe in part this race does attract more
than its fair share of younger bike studs, given the heavy bike weight. However, on the surface, my 2013 numbers are
on the poorer end of this spectrum. The
differences between the 2008 and 2013 numbers and the discussion in the prior
paragraph taken together suggest that the conditions were tougher in 2008 and I
should have been even more than a minute faster this morning.
I also
compared my self to Scott Duprex. Scott
is a former pro and many-time Kona veteran.
He is a consistent Bassman entrant and he finished: 1st, 1st,
3rd, and 5th respectively in the ’05, ’06, ’08, ’13
versions of this race. Unfortunately,
the RD did not capture his 2006 bike split but here is how my bike split
compares to his for the other three Bassman bike splits:
2005: +
6.67%
2008: +
6.26%
2013: +
9.51%
It’s hard
to get a lot of insight from such a small dataset but at face value this
implies I should have been some 3% faster this morning. This means I was about 2:30 slow, which feels
right to me. In any event, I definitely
had a very disappointing ride this morning.
Competitively,
in my AG, I did still manage to secure the fastest bike split. Maglione had a surprisingly strong split,
although he was also rung up for drafting and a 2-minute penalty. Here is where we stood after the bike, with
Marlione’s numbers showing both with and without penalty:
1. Christofferson --------
2. Senff +
5:02
3. Maglione +
6:49 (8:49)
4. Cassamatis +13:57
5. Stahl +17:46
Transition Two
As I
labored into transition I could sense right away that my legs were shot—much
more than they should have been. This
was a big disappointment because the steeper seat-tube angle on my new bike
should in theory lead to less stress on my legs. Maybe the new position was stressing weaker,
relatively undertrained muscles than my older, more dialed in position. In any event I felt like crap as I trudged
into T2.
However, I did execute a very
efficient T2 posting a time of 1:53 over the 0.13-mile transition. I averaged 154 bpm from a HR perspective. I had the 13th fastest T2 OA (90.0
%-tile) and the best in my AG. One
positive I take away through the first three races this year is that my
transitions are quite a bit better than in years past. Here is where we stood after T2:
1. Christofferson --------
2. Senff +
5:53
3. Maglione +
6:51 (8:51)
4. Cassamatis +14:34
5. Stahl +20:04
The Run
As I
headed out for the run I was under the clear impression that I was both
comfortably in the lead and that I was having a very poor race. The early part of the run indicated to me
that if anything I was going to have an even worse day and that perhaps I
shouldn’t be so comfortable about my lead.
Around
about 2 miles there was an out and back section and I could see that Maglione
was now in second and that he was a bit more than 4 minutes behind me and Senff
was not far behind him. As bad as I felt
(really bad), this calmed me a bit.
Normally I would expect to run about the same as Maglione (I was 29
seconds faster at Bassman in 2008) and and a bit faster than Senff.
Later,
around 4 miles, there was another part of the course where I could get a
glimpse back to my competitors and I was shocked to see that Maglione had
closed to within 2 minutes and it seemed like Senff was still a good 5 minutes
back. Ughhh! This confirmed my poor run
but I also determined that I could still win this one pretty comfortably.
Here are
the splits from my run:
Mile
1: 8:36/161 bpm
Mile
2: 8:42/162 bpm
Mile
3: 8:46/160 bpm
Mile
4: 8:37/160 bpm
Mile
5: 8:44/161 bpm
Mile 5.2:
7:55/162 bpm
It may
have been slow but it sure was consistently so!
Anyways, I finished with a
disappointing 44:43 run split. This
is an 8:37/mile pace. There was 92 feet
of elevation gain in this mostly flat course.
My heart rate averaged 161 bpm so it certainly wasn’t the case that I
was dogging it!
Comparatively,
this was a horrible run. I had the 58th
fastest run (52.5 %-tile) and was a miserable 5th in my AG. It’s been a long time since I’ve had one as
bad as this!
None-the-less,
I finished the race in 2:30:01, which was 32nd OA (74.2
%-tile). My AG victory is the 40th
of my career in 129 races (31.0 %). Here
were the final standings:
1. Christofferson --------
2. Maglione +
2:35
3. Senff +
4:42
4. Cassamatis +13:09
5. Stahl +21:19
Take-Aways
1. No two ways about it. A bad day in the office! I’m not surprised by this. As I’ve progressed from old to ancient I’ve
noted greater variability in my race day performance. I used to be able to train through “C” races
and still preform reasonably well almost every time. Increasingly this approach leads to clunkers
like I had today.
2. That said, I persevered and
finished yet another triathlon and I was fortunate enough to not be at my best
and still claim my AG victory—and number 40 at that. I certainly don’t take this for granted and
am grateful for this outcome.
3. I didn’t feel particularly good
before the race and my guess is that this did negatively affect things.
4. My new bike and my position is
slower than my old bike/position. I
suspect that I’ll be able to correct that over the next couple of weeks and I
will work to do so. I’m also aware, that
even when I get it “right” there will probably be an adjustment period before
my body is able to go as fast as it should be able to on this beautiful new
machine. That said, I’ll race the old
TT01 up in Boston next weekend. The TM01
is going back to the “minors” until I’m confident I have it right.
5. There is also a strong probability
that the optimistic take from my first two triathlons this year was in-fact too
optimistic. Today’s race may just
indicate that my reduced training load in 2013 has left me in not so good shape
for early May.
We’ll
find out more this coming weekend when I race up in Boston at the New England Season
Opener.
Thanks
for reading!
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