Belleplain Triathlon Race Report

 OK--I'm really behind but will catch up this week.  I've actually done 2 TRIs and 2 OW swims I need to report about as well as my training progress and the road ahead.   But for this post: here is my Bellplain super sprint Race Report from the race I did 3 weeks ago:

Belleplain Triathlon Race Report

 

Date:                                                   June 18^th, 2022

Location:                                             Belleplain State Forest: Woodstown, NJ

Format:                                               Super Sprint: 200-yard swim/9-mile bike/1-mile run

2022 Triathlon Race Number:            2

Career Triathlon Race Number:         167

 

Conditions:                              Favorable.  Mid 70s, humid, 10-15 mph wind, water temp of 75

 

Background

Second triathlon of the 2022 season and the first of a “Super-Sprint Double-Header” weekend, as I planned to race here in NJ on Saturday and then down in Maryland on Sunday.

 

The race at Belleplain is a very small, local NJ race, which I competed in back in 2019—the last time it was held due to CoVid.  Its run by DQTriDu Events, a local race management group that has been holding events here since back in 2003.  The year before (2002), that race was called the Cape May Triathlon, which was the 2^nd triathlon I ever did.  After that year, DQ bought the race and has run it ever since.

 

The swim is held in “Lake” Nummy, which, is more of a shallow pond, and the bike/run in and around the State Forest.  Back in 2019 there were 57 people in the race, but I was a bit disappointed to learn that there were just 29 people in this year’s edition, but my 65-69 age-group had 5 competitors—which made it the largest Age Group in the race—something that must be very rare indeed!

 

It's only about 15 miles to the race site so it was easy to get there and arrive relatively early.  When I unloaded my bike at the race site, I was disappointed to find a flat rear tire.  It was fine the day before during my test ride of my race wheels so I concluded that I must have had a slow leak that led to the flat in my car overnight. Fortunately, I had three spare tubes with me and proceeded to execute the change.  Unfortunately, none of my 3 spare tubes could hold air.  I surmised that the problem was all 3 of the spares were spares I had built for the 808 wheels (80mm tubes with an extension and sealed with electrician tape) and they were probably 3-4 years old and had probably had dry rot.  Note to self: after the race make a fresh set of new 808 compatible tubes.

 

I wasn’t happy about the prospect, but I decided that my only option was to use my original tube and to try to pump up my rear tire as close to the swim as possible and to bring a CO2 cartridge/inflator along on the race and if necessary, give it some CO2 mid-race and hope that this was enough to get me back to transition.  Not ideal, and not the kind of situation someone with my racing experience should really let happen, but it seemed to be my only choice.

 

The Swim

 

The swim was 3 sides of a rectangle out into the lake from a beach start.  There was also a standard sprint race that preceded ours and I was able to run back to transition to check on my tire twice and both times found it noticeably soft and so I repumped it—the last time just 2-3 minutes before the start of our swim.

 

This is not the type of situation you want to deal with right before a race, but I felt relatively calm about it.  The bike was only 9 miles long and I felt I had a reasonably good chance of getting through it, even if my tire was 40-50 psi.

 

All the men went in the first wave, and I just cruised through the swim.  I didn’t see the need to hammer this swim, given its length, and as I swam, I could easily see the two guys in front of me (it would turn out that 3 women in the subsequent wave would also out swim me).  I exited the swim in 4:06 and measured it at 213 yards.  This is a quite poor 1:56/100 and reflects my lack of sprint/super-sprint specific swim training. (I had also gone though a 6-week stretch, where I wasn’t able to get the desired amount of training in).  I averaged 33 spm but had a dismal dps of just 1.54 yards.  This is well short of the 1.9-2.0 yds/stroke I achieve when I’m swimming well.

 

Competitively, I was 7^th OA on the swim, which works out to be at the 79.3 %-tile.  Fwiw, in 2019 I was 13 seconds slower and was at the 66.7 %-tile in that race.  I easily had the best swim in my AG and here is where I stood after the swim:

 

1.     RC                                --------

2.     Vanore                        + 1:34

3.     Fischer                        + 2:47

4.     Kuehnle                       + 2:54

5.     Henderson                  + 3:43

 

Transition One

It’s a long run from the lake to transition and part of it was over a bunch of little pinecones—ouch!  The first thing I did when I got to my bike was check my rear tire and it felt a bit soft but not as bad as I feared—all right!  Time to hammer!  I finished my transition in 2:26, according to my Garmin, which was 6^th best OA and 2^nd to Vanore in my AG.  Here is where we stood after T1:

 

1.     RC                                --------

2.     Vanore                        + 1:02

3.     Fischer                        + 4:15

4.     Henderson                  + 6:16

5.     Kuehnle                       + 6:26

 

 

The Bike

 

The bike at this venue is flat and generally fast—there are a couple of sections that have poor road quality/potholes but generally, the pavement is pretty good.  I tried to really attack on the bike and soon passed all but one of the men in front of me (there were 3, as one guy I had outswam, had out transitioned me).

 

I executed the 9.21-mile bike in 23:51, which works out to 23.2 mph.  This seems pretty good, but I was disappointed to see that I only averaged 219 watts—which is 20-30 watts short of what I think I’m capable of on a ride like this.  As an aside, I wonder if I’m losing my ability to really hammer or if what I’m seeing is a lack of high intensity work in my training (probably both).

 

The good news is I had the fastest overall bike split by 26 seconds (over the eventual OA race winner, Pappas).  My time was within 2 seconds of 2019 and in that race, I had only posted the 5^th fastest time.

 

My bike was good enough to pull me into 2^nd place overall:

 

1.     Pappas                        --------

2.     RC                               + 0:56

3.     Kerr                             + 2:06

4.     Hackmeister                + 2:46

5.     Bennett                       + 3:35

 

I didn’t know these specifics of-course, but as I entered T2, I fully believed I had an excellent chance of being on the podium and that 2^nd place was mine to lose.  As for my AG, with only a 1-mile run, my bike was essentially good enough to seal the victory:

 

1.     RC                                ---------

2.     Vanore                        + 4:32

3.     Fischer                        +10:22

4.     Kuehnle                       +15:10

5.     Henderson                  +18:45

 

 

Transition Two

I dismounted and ran into T2…. which was a ghost town—so satisfying!

 

I knew I wasn’t going to catch the 41-year-old leader, but I was psyched to push hard to secure 2^nd.  In 2019 I ran this mile in 8:30 and while I didn’t think I could do that today; I was pretty confident I could run a 9-minute mile or so.

 

I had decided to use my Nike Alpha-Flys for this race (vs. the Next %) as I wanted to test them, in a race situation, as I thought I might use them at Kona.  I had a big problem getting my right shoe on—not using socks probably hurt a bit.  I wasted a lot of time in transition and kinda’ panicked a bit and really strained hard to get my heal in.

 

And then my hamstring popped!  I could tell right away that this was not a minor thing, and my immediate thought was: “I guess I won’t be racing in Maryland tomorrow….”.  I focused back in and finally got my shoe on, and I jumped up and went to see how bad it was.

 

The answer I got was: “pretty bad”.  I tried to push on my right leg, and it basically didn’t work.  I stopped and turned around and didn’t see anyone right behind me and I thought: “how bad can this be...it’s only a mile…no way I’m DNFing this thing!  And so, I decided to just get through the mile as best as I could.

 

My transition, of course was very slow.  It took me 1:30 to complete my T2 (although it seemed a lot longer).  This was 16^th best OA (48.3 %-tile).  Strangely enough, I had the 2^nd fastest T2 in my AG, but Vanore was able to gain a bit on me:

 

1.     RC                                --------

2.     Vanore                        + 3:53

3.     Fischer                        +10:40

4.     Kuehnle                       +15:56

5.     Henderson                  +18:50

 

The Run

So, it went the way you’d probably expect.  Very Ugly.  I basically had to use my bad leg to drag my good, but very compromised, leg around.  It was only 1-mile, but it was tough to do.  I was passed by the eventual 2nd place guy but was able to hold onto a podium spot (by just 6 seconds).  My training partner Midge Kerr also passed me on her way to the OA Female win so technically I finished 4^th OA.

 

It took me 11:04 to traverse the 1.02 miles (10:54/mile pace).  This was 21^st OA (31.0 %-tile---OMG!) and 3^rd in my AG.  Here is where I stood overall and in my AG:

 

1.     Pappas                        --------

2.     Hackmeister                + 3:52

3.     Kerr                             + 4:41

4.     RC                                + 6:24

5.     Bennett                       + 6:30

 

1.     RC                                --------

2.     Vanore                        + 1:36

3.     Fischer                        +10:48

4.     Kuehnle                       +15:09

5.     Henderson:                 +20:23

 

Afterwards, I discovered that my bike’s rear-tire was flat and that I couldn’t do much walking and no running for 2 weeks afterwards, but it does now seem (3+ weeks later) to have sufficiently healed to allow me to make a push run-training wise in front of my 8/6 half-Ironman in Boulder.  And I ended up not going to Maryland and instead hosted a Father's Day party and drank too much tequila!

 

Onward and upward!

Belated Update

Hi folks--sorry for the longish radio silence.  Very busy times in the Christofferson family with graduations, new homes, family reunions, extended friends' visits, etc. and lots of work on our beach home and for my "job".  Beginning to emerge from that period now and looking forward to a "return to normal" summer training schedule.

The prioritization of a bunch of personal stuff led to a pretty significant decline in what was a pretty high level of training prior to May/early June.  This is documented below.

First off, May was my lightest training month so far in 2022 (April volumes in parentheses for context):

Swim: 25,562 yards  (52,150)

Bike: 945 miles  (1,404)

Run: 47 miles (30)

Time: 76 hours (111 hours)

So in terms of total training time, May was down about 32% from April, with the biggest decline coming on the swim--part of this is that in can be challenging to get a lot of swim volume in May as I mostly transition to open water swimming, and the open water can be pretty cold here in May--it's been especially cold this year, really only reaching 60 degrees by the later part of May.

Not surprising to be able to see this slow down in the Trailing 4-week and Cumulative volume charts below.  First for the swim.  Note how in all 4 years, beginning around week 19 (which is May) I have trouble getting a lot of swim volume in.  However, the fall-off in 2022, is especially steep:

You can see how my 2022 weekly swim volume (green) has fallen by about 2/3rds over the last 4-5 weeks.  The early 2022 swim focus still leads me with cumulatively more swim yards this year than the prior three years but the recent reduction is pretty significant and relevant. 

I can see this slow down reflected in my swim times as I seem to be stuck around 1:50/100 for my open water swims as of late and I would have expected to be down nearer to 1:40/100.  Obviously, I need to get my swim volume back up over 10k/week and work hard to bring my times down.  The good news is next week we are starting my regular open water swims with my local crew and so this shouldn't be difficult to achieve.

Turning to the bike:

You can see a similar story on the bike, although not as pronounced.  I had been mostly in the 300-350 mile/week range but this has recently dropped by about 100 miles/week.  You can see the uptick in the last couple of weeks as my schedule has begun to clear a bit.  The good news is just about all of my volume now is outside on my TT bike, and my experience is such that this drives acceleration in my fitness build.

In contrast to my swim, I seem to be pretty strong on my bike right now.  I had a good first race in mid-May and I did my first 100+ mile ride this week and clocked 5:26 for 100 miles, which is quite good for me for the middle of June.  Last year, for context, my first 100+ miler was on 6/29 and it took me 5:46 so my guess is I'm maybe 3-4 weeks ahead of where I was last year.

For the run:

My run is going against the prevailing trend in 2022 in that I just really can't train very much given the state of my knee and ironically, I actually had my biggest month in May (which is different than having a big month in May).  I continue to track 2021 run volume but I with decidedly more hike/trek/walk vs. actual running....not pretty!

Finally: my total training time charts:

These reflect what the three sports charts show.  My weekly training volume dropped from around 25 hours/week to in the 15-20 hours/week range over the latest period.

Anyways, I hope to get back to the pre-May levels over the next 6 weeks as I am now full-on in my Ironman build at this point.

Racing wise, I had to bail on Eagleman, mostly due to life obligations--I just couldn't get away for the 3 days or so necessary to make it happen.  In its place I had planned to race a double on this Father's Day weekend, but some interesting developments during yesterday's race means I'm not racing on this Sunday morning--more on this shortly but I will say, I ultimately had a satisfying race yesterday.

Onward and upward!

Bear Sprint Triathlon Race Report: Here we go again!

 Bear Triathlon Race Report

Date:                                                   May 15^th, 2022

Location:                                             Lum’s Pond State Park: Bear, DE

Format:                                               Sprint: 1,000-yard swim/10-mile bike/3-mile run

2022 Triathlon Race Number:            1

Career Triathlon Race Number:         166

 

Conditions:                              Favorable.  Mid 60s, very humid—dew point in low 60s, foggy,  light wind, water temp of 68

 

Background

Hard to believe, given the deteriorating condition of my-soon-to-be-replaced left knee, that I find myself at 4am waking up on this mid-May morning to do yet another triathlon—the 166^th of my career and the first of 2022.  I’m hopeful to do 5 or 6 this year, ultimately culminating in October at Kona where hopefully, Anders and I can at long last race the IM World Championship that we qualified for back in November 2019, in the pre-CoVid days.

 

As detailed in my blog below, I have been focused in early 2022 on a heavy volume swim/bike training program—lots of volume at very modest intensity.  I’ve had 3 of my 5 highest career monthly swim volumes with March and April being my 2^nd and 1^st highest volumes respectively.  I’ve also put in big bike miles with January being my largest ever at 1,714 miles and April, my 3^rd highest at 1,404 miles.  I haven’t run (nor hiked/walked) very much in 2022 as my longest run before this race was just 3 miles.

 

At the end of April, I had completed 5 consecutive weeks of 25+ hours/week of training and over the two weeks prior to this race, backed it down considerably (15 hours/week) to shed some fatigue and due to my travel schedule.  I had just completed a trip to Utah to see Anders race the “2021” IM World champs in St. George and to visit at his new home in Boulder, Co.  I still felt like my legs were heavy from the early season training load but wasn’t too concerned given the limited distances of this sprint race.  I was also near race weight (about 170 pounds) as I had focused on a relatively strict diet, especially in January and April.

 

The race venue was Delaware’s Lum’s Pond State Park.  The swim was in said pond, the bike on flat and relatively low traffic roads near the pond, and the run was on grass and muddy (lots of rain the day prior) trails within the park.  I’ve raced at this venue several times before.  My first time racing here was back in 2002, in my 8^th triathlon, where I finished 46^th overall and 7^th in my AG—early days!  I remember how disgusting the pond was back in August of that year but on this May morning, with low water temps, the venue looked pretty good. 

 

There were 225 people in the Sprint race (there was a simultaneous Olympic distance as well) and 9 in my new 65-69 year-old Age Group.  I didn’t do any of my usual competitive research on my AG competitors and planned to just focus on my own race, essentially an individual time-trial, as opposed to optimizing competitive race tactics.  It’s early in the season and I hadn’t raced in 8+ months so I just wanted to shake the cobwebs off and execute a well-managed, limited mistake, drama-free triathlon.

 

I arrived shortly before 5am, as the race venue was just a 20-minute drive from my Delaware home.  As I pumped up my front tire, the rotating screw top of my Presta tube broke off.  The tube didn’t leak but I thought there would be a good chance it might as I raced, so I executed a tube replacement.  Beyond that, just the usual, and I was able to warm up (bike/run) and soon had my transition zone, at my assigned rack spot, all set up.  I didn’t have a very good, assigned spot, as it was near the end of one of the racks in the middle of transition.  I was also crammed in with all the old dinosaurs and two of my competitors decided to bring chairs to transition (to help with the transition process presumably) and one of them was blocking my bike.  I chuckled, smiled and didn’t say a thing, and figured I’d just work around it.

 

The Olympic race went first, and my Sprint wave didn’t start until 7:28am (second Sprint wave), so I had plenty of time to hang out and reflect on things.  Frankly, I felt relatively nervous to race and to be honest I was even questioning myself “what am I doing?” given how challenging these things are with a knee that needs to be replaced.  I ultimately concluded that I would just race a relatively easy, controlled race.  I’d focus on staying safe and giving it a good, solid effort and not worry about whether I was winning my AG or where I placed in the overall standings.  Soon, it was time for the old guys to jump into the chilly pond and kick-off the 2022 season.

 

The Swim

 

The swim course was relatively similar for both the Olympic and sprint races.  Here is the course map:

 

In looking at the course, pre-race, it seemed to me that there was no way that the Olympic course was 50+% larger (1,500 meters vs. 1,000 yards) than the Sprint course.  Further, by my eye (and I’m a good judge of this), the Sprint course looked significantly longer than 1,000 yards—maybe 20-30% longer.  I viewed this as a positive, as I felt with all my 2022 swim volume that I was likely to be a relatively stronger swimmer, as compared to the field as a whole.

 

At the start I calmly waded it, in a restrained shuffle, and then started to ease into my swim.  I haven’t done a whole bunch of higher intensity swimming this year and had not practiced aggressive starts, so I was focused on keeping my heart rate under control.  I stayed to the right, nearer the shore and away from the buoy line to avoid traffic.  I was giving up the drafting advantage, but I was focused on a controlled, drama-free race.

 

I could quickly see that I was up towards the front of my wave and in relatively short order, I began passing a bunch of the slower, younger swimmers from the first wave.  As I passed the first turn buoy, I glanced at my watch and saw that I was already near 500 yards, so I knew then that the course was going to be long. I swam very easy the whole swim, knowing I was leaving some time on the table.

 

My training swims indicated I should be able to do about 1:45/100 yards with relative ease.  As I exited the water I glanced down at my Garmin and saw that the swim took me 22:54 and that it had covered 1,216 yards.  I tried to run the math in my head as I jogged towards the transition area.  This proved difficult but I could estimate that I was over 1:50/100 (actually 1:53/100).  This was disappointing, but I guess not surprising, given my easy-peasy approach to this swim.

 

My swim dynamic stats were:

-       750 total strokes

-       1.62 yards/stroke

-       32 strokes/minute

 

My 500-yard splits were 1:48/100 and 1:57/100.  I didn’t feel like this was happening but apparently, I pretty much dogged it in the back half of the swim.

 

This distance per stroke is poor for me.  I would have expected at least 1.9 yards/stroke and when I’m really on my game I can hit 2+ yards/stroke.  Based on this data I’d have to give myself a “C” for this swim.

 

They didn’t have the swim end timing mat until just before the entry to transition so the longish jog through the woods was also counted as part of the swim time.  This jog took nearly 90 seconds before I entered the transition area.

 

Competively, I had a pretty good swim.  I was 45^th overall (80.4 %-tile) and had the fastest split in my Age Group.  In fact, I was a full 2:51 ahead of the next fellow in my Age Group and had I known this I would have been quite pleased.  As I thought about my AG race, I had thought I probably needed to be ahead by about 4 minutes after the bike to have a chance of winning, given my slow run (due to the knee), and so I was hoping to pick up 2 minutes in the swim and another 2 on the bike.  Here is where we stood after the swim:

 

1.         RC                    --------

2.         Wilkins            + 2:51

3.         McNew           + 3:04

4.         Capista            + 4:20

5.         Fischer            +10:02

 

Transition One

As I jogged up to my rack space, I could see that I was the first one in my AG to have completed the swim.  I didn’t know by how much, but figured it was pretty a solid lead as no one joined me while I prepared to bike.  I soon lifted my bike up over my competitors chair and began the long jog to the bike mount line.  I didn’t see anyone in my AG and figured that I was probably near my 2-minute lead objective.

 

I’m not sure why they did this, but when you finally reached the parking lot, they had you push your bike another couple hundred yards before they allowed you to mount your bike (this is real fun in bike shoes).  They had my T1 at 1:25, which was the time between the two timing mats in transition, but my actual T1 (time at the end of my swim to the time at the start of my bike) ended up totaling 5:15.

 

For the official measured part of T1, I had the fastest T1 in my AG and was able to put significant time into most of my competitors.  Here is where we stood after T1:

 

1.         RC                    --------

2.         Wilkins            + 3:03

3.         McNew           + 5:44

4.         Capista            + 7:14

5.         Fischer            +13:24

 

The Bike

 

The bike course was about a 1.5-mile road within the park, out to about a 7-mile loop around the park and then the same 1.5-mile road back to transition.  The road within the park was relatively poor with a bunch of speed-bumps and potholes to navigate, but once out on the loop, the pavement was excellent and overall, the bike course was quite fast in my judgement.  I recorded about 335 feet of elevation gain, so the course was also relatively flat (average gradient of about 1.2%).

Here I am leaving the park:

I navigated the park road without incident and began to push once out on the main road.  I was pleased to feel that my legs had a lot of “pop” in them, and I was generally running everyone else down on the bike.  There were a couple of Olympic race draft trains that came by on their second laps, but I didn’t pay any attention to them.

 

In my pre-race preparation, I noted that my power-meter’s batteries were dead, so unfortunately, I have no power nor cadence data.  Also, I couldn’t locate my HR strap, so I basically had to ride by feel.  My main evaluative metric for the bike was average speed, and prior to the race I would have thought that 22-mph would be a pretty good effort given my lack of high intensity interval work so far in 2022.

 

As it turned out I could tell that I was going to ride faster than that.  I was typically seeing 24 mph or so on the flats and hit 27.4 mph at one point.  I was slower on the modest climbs, of course, but was able to average 24.0 mph for the first 5 miles.  My second 5 was slower at 22.4 mph due in part to the back half being generally more uphill and maybe due to a little fatigue.

 

I didn’t feel like I was on the rivet at all during the race, just riding comfortably.  My Garmin optical HR had my average HR at 156bpm.  I don’t know how accurate that is, but it seems to jive with my perception as I typically will average above 160bpm when I’m really after it.

 

All-in-all, it was an easy, drama-free ride that I measured at 10.24 miles and took me 26:42 to complete.  This turns out to be an average of 23.0 mph and given everything, I’d have to grade this ride an “A” effort.

 

One of the interesting things is to compare my recorded time on the bike (from my computer) to my official time, which was 30:51.  This is a difference of 4:09 and that time is essentially the elapsed time it took me to push my bike from transition, out to the parking lot and around the parking lot to the bike mount line, and the reverse of that at the end of the ride.  This was easily over a quarter mile in total.

 

There was a 50-year-old (Hicks) who passed me pushing his bike around the parking lot at the beginning of the ride, whom I passed during the ride, and who then re-passed me while I was pushing the bike in transition after the ride.  His recorded bike time was 30:00 or 51 seconds faster than mine.  I think I was maybe 10-20 seconds faster on the actual bike ride, so I lost something like 60+ seconds due to this extended transition (and the fact I can’t run fast--while pushing a bike).  I think this deficit was probably generally true against most, if not all, of the faster bikers.  This means that my official bike time, relative to the front of the pack, was probably penalized.

 

With that in mind, I officially had the 21^st fastest bike split (91.1 %-tile).  Hicks was 14^th (94.2 %-tile) and so most likely, I was actually in the top 5% of the bike—which is normally where I finish in a race like this.  Further, I probably could have gone 60-90 seconds faster if I had really pushed it (but then would have paid the price on the run).  So, as I suggested above, an “A” bike ride.

 

As for my AG, the race was effectively over as I put 8+ minutes into all my competitors.  Here is where we stood after the bike:

 

1.         RC                    --------

2.         Wilkins            +11:22

3.         McNew           +13:26

4.         Capista           +17:02

5.         Fischer            +21:50

 

Transition Two

As I entered T2, I was pleased to see a paucity of bikes, which confirmed that I had indeed had a solid bike ride.  Importantly, at my rack spot, there were no bikes, so I knew I was still leading the race and although I didn’t know by how much, I suspected that I had a pretty solid lead.  I lifted my bike up over my competitor’s chair and racked it and worked through my transition chores.

 

I had left wearing socks or not as a T2 game time decision and decided at that moment to not put on my fluorescent yellow (Cedar Island Swim) socks on.  There is a funny story with that, which I’ll share shortly.  

My total T2 was 3:26 (and 1:41 officially) and this was the 2^nd fastest in my AG.  Except for Wilkins, I was generally able to further pad my lead against my competitors:

 

1.         RC                    --------

2.         Wilkins            +10:26

3.         McNew           +13:52

4.         Capista            +18:04

5.         Fischer            +22:10

 

The Run

So headed out for my first run in 3+ weeks and I immediately felt the bone-on-bone in my left knee but went into my “I’m-not-going-to-let-it-bother-me mode”.  I ran at a slightly uncomfortable pace.  I wasn’t really at my limit, but I was mindful that I was in a race.

 

The course was very flat (I recorded 48 feet of total elevation gain) and was about a half-mile of quite thick grass at the beginning and end of the out and back, and then a mile or so section of a very narrow, somewhat muddy path.  The path was narrow enough that runners approaching each other both had to edge off the path to avoid ruing into each other.

 

I had trouble seeing my pace on my Garmin, due to my bad eyes and the insufficient light caused by the fog and trees overhead.  I soon reached the one-mile mark well under 10 minutes, but given that my watch hadn’t vibrated and given me my 1-mile split, I immediately suspected the mile split was short.  This proved true as I continued running for a bit and then hit the mile mark with an elasped time of 10:41. Shortly thereafter, I saw the 2-mile split for the return part of the run and new the mile markers were off and/or the run was not 3 miles (in an out-and-back 3-mile run, the 1 and 2 mile markers should be at the same place—1/2-mile from the turnaround.)

 

I felt reasonably good and thought that the 10:41/mile was fine.  My hope had been to go sub-33 on the run.  After the turn-around, I decided to not check out the other runners and see if I had an AG competitor closing in on me.  I decided I was just going to try to hold this pace and if someone caught me, then so be it.

 

Several times during the run I shifted my visor around because it seemed uncomfortably tight for some reason—more on that in a moment!

 

I hit the second mile with a 10:39 split and then the 3^rd went by at 10:35—so a nice, steady, slightly negative split pacing.  As I neared the finish line, the announcer said: “Here’s comes Randy Christofferson, and he’s wearing my favorite bib number—420”.  LOL--slow times at Ridgemont High?

 

The course was a little long and I finished the 3.06-mile run in 32:30, which turns out to be an average pace of 10:37/mile.  While objectively, a pedestrian pace, this surprisingly turns out to have been the 2^ndfastest in my AG and was the 107^th overall (52.9 %-tile).  My HR seems to have averaged about 164 bpm, which seems about right.  Given that I had no idea how my knee would react, I’m happy with this run and all things considered, I’d give myself a “B” grade for the run.  

 

I finished the overall race with a time of 1:30:44, which was good enough for 49^th overall (78.7 %-tile).  I was able to win my AG comfortably, having extended my lead by another 6-7 minutes on the run against my closest pursuers:

 

1.         RC                    --------

2.         Wilkins            +17:28

3.         McNew           +19:57

4.         Filtz                 +21:23

5.         Capista            +27:35

 

Here is my finish line picture.  If you look closely at the side of my head, you can notice a splash of fluorescent yellow:

When I got back to my transition area, I was dismayed to see only one of my favorite yellow socks were there.  I probably spent 3-4 minutes looking for the missing sock and couldn’t understand where it could have gone.  When I took my hat off, the mysteries of the too tight visor and the missing sock were simultaneously solved as the yellow sock fell to the ground—I had a bright yellow sock sticking out of the headband of my visor, on the back of my head, for the whole race.  I guess no one who passed me during the race thought it notable that a gimpy old guy would race with a sock sticking out of his visor!  

 

This to me sums up my current Triathlon status.  The old guy who races with socks stuck in his hat….

Finally here is my "podium picture" with Wilkins and McNew:

 

Post-Race

 

Pretty shocking to win with such a controlled effort combined with such a big gap.  No offense meant, but this is probably more of a commentary on my competitors than a reflection of the strength of my race.  Still, I was indeed quite a bit faster than my competition, and you can only race the people who show up on race morning.  Also finishing around the 80^th %-tile overall is not the worst result either. 

 

This is my 55^th career Age Group win (33.1%-win percentage) so there is that as well.

 

In the few days following the race, my knee/leg reacted poorly, and I’ve had to limit my training activity this week.  This is causing me to reassess the logic of racing Eagleman70.3 in a few weeks.  We’ll have to play that by ear over the next couple of weeks.  This is clearly going to be a challenging year for me to navigate but at the end of the day, my principal objective is to get to the starting line of Kona with a reasonable chance of finishing it.  And then I’ll get my knee replaced.

 

Onward and upward!

April and last week

 I decided to skip a week run wise to try to make sure my legs are absorbing the increase without totally blowing out my knee.  Besides that SAMO as I recorded my 5th straight 25+ hour week:

Swim: 12,100 yards

Bike: 346 miles

Run: 0 miles

Time: 25:10

For the month of April I hit a new record for monthly swim volume and now my three biggest swim months are all in 2022.  I also recorded my 3rd biggest bike month:

Swim: 52,150 yards

Bike: 1,404 miles

Run: 30 miles

Time: 111 hours 8 minutes

Here are may top months in the three disciplines:

Onward and upward!

Updated Trailing 4-Week Average Training volume Charts

Here are my trailing 4-week average training volume charts which depict 2022 training volume relative to 2019-2021.  2019 was the year of my last IM (Arizona) where I KQed.  Also that year, Anders and I went on a couple week mountaineering expo to Bolivia, and that impacted training volumes.  2020/2021 were heavily impacted by Kona....

First, for the swim....

  2022 is my biggest early season swim training block in my 22 years of doing this.  You can see that I've consistently been between 10-13k yards/week since late January.  In fact, only 3 of the first 16 weeks has seen me doing less than 10k/week.  My focus was replicating the first half of 2021 with an earlier ramp and you can see that I have executed this approach.  The 2020 numbers were greatly impacted by CoVid:

I've been in "Bike Monster" mode beginning in 2019 post Bolivia (June) and you can see the big bike volume I've consistently put in.  2021 was especially a big early season effort and so far in 2022 I've exceeded that by a fair amount.  11 of my weeks have been 300+ miles and 3 have been above 400 miles/week:

On the run I'm continuing to track 2021 and am in the process of trying to slowly ramp up.  2019 volume was inflated by my Bolivia training and 2020 by CoVid:

In terms of total training time, I obviously put in a huge effort, especially in the early season.  this year, I've been especially consistent.  My last 4 weeks and 6 of the last 7 have been above 25 hours/week.  In total I've been above 25 hours 11 times and 30 hours/week 2 times.  I've only had 2 weeks were my training time was below 20 hours with my low point this year being 16.2 hours....

So far in 2022, here are my weekly volume averages:

Swim: 11,020 yards

Bike: 325 miles

Run: 7 miles

Time: 25 hours