Festivus of Mysteri-ishness

I said after last year’s Guntersville Olympic experience of 43 degrees and rain that I would not be back.  Not to mention the 7.1 mile eroded trail run that kept me out of running for almost 2 weeks after the event.  However, when I saw the announcement of a Festival (aka Festivus) I was unable to resist the temptation to participate in another epic Parker Edmiston extravagahnzaaaa!

The morning started with the early wake up, picking up Doug Wright for his first Olympic distance triathlon and arriving at Guntersville State Park at 6:00 a.m.  I racked my bike in rock star parking and commenced to stand around trying to convince myself to go for a warm up jog or bike ride.  I eventually rode a short distance to mechanically check my bike and then back to standing around.  The next decision was, “Is it really cold enough to justify a wetsuit?” (I think the announced water temperature was 72 degrees).  I’m convinced that I swim slower in my wetsuit.  It feels like I have giant rubberbands wrapped around my shoulders.  I ultimately caved to peer pressure and the chilling idea of treading water waiting on the start horn and donned my wetsuit.

I started in the 2^nd wave with the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.  Look at the results and you will see that of the approximately 8 of the Top 25 male Olympic racers were in the 40 and older category.  Another interesting statistic was that the Top 5 male finishers were from 5 different age categories.  I mention this to show that this sport truly is for everyone and age does not have to be a discriminator.  Swim was 1500’ish meters, and I knew after the first 200 meters that it would be a slow time.  My shoulders were getting a much heavier workout than should be expected.  My swim time was just under 33 minutes and proved to be a weakness in the overall race.  It is usually my strongest event (relative to my age group) and provides a few needed minutes versus the guys that are running sub 7 minute miles on the 10K. I will have to give a sleeveless wetsuit a test to see if this will improve in the future. 

 T1 was unremarkable and off for the bike.  The rolling hills going out of the park and on the first portion of Hwy 227 kept things at a slower pace for the first 5 miles.  The course isn’t difficult, but can be deceiving if you fail to respect the climbing portions.  I felt good coming off the bike and T2 was pretty quick.  I did choose to run in my Hokas and wear socks due to the expectation of a tough, hilly, and graveled run course.  This added a few seconds to T2 trying to get socks on.

I headed out on the run dreading the big gravel hill.  I kept a 8:10 pace for the first 2 miles, up to the start of the big hill at about mile 3.  I was reduced to speed walking the last 25 yards or so of the hill.  Walking was faster than my run pace.  I ended up with an average of 8:31 min/mile. The good news is that this year the 10K was actually “only” 10K.  I finished the day at 2:45:17 with a 4^th place finish in my age group for the Olympic Triathlon.

 The day was still young.  Next up was a 3’ish mile trail run.  Marty Eaton was the course director and he did not disappoint.  I’m not an accomplished trail runner, but I venture to say that this was a relatively challenging course.  It started off the gravel hill from the Olympic 10K course and made a giant loop around a pretty large hill.  It felt like most of the course was uphill, but somehow I ended back up at the start point.  This was a lot of fun, but around 2 miles in, the woods were getting hot and there was absolutely no wind.  I was praying that 3’ish was closer to 3 than the “ish”.  It ended up being 3.3 miles on my Garmin and was advertised as an “active recovery” by Marty.  Ha! I say to whoever believes in the myth of active recovery within 3 hours of completing an Olympic Triathlon. 

What next you ask?  Of course, a 2.1 mile King of the Mountain (KOM) hill climb with an average grade of 7% and the maximum grade at 19.5%.  steepest .25 mile section gaining about 200 feet in elevation.  It began at the campground store with a time trial start.  The first section was nice climb, but manageable.  The second half was a BEAST!  It was great that the crowd of family supporters were all stationed at the steepest part, yelling and ringing cowbells.  I resorted to the serpentine technique (aka “delivering the mail”).  Thankfully this concluded day 1 and my legs and lungs were both ready for a break.

Sunday morning started with a quick trip to the buffet and Guntersville Lodge.  Then Festivus Event #3 was the dip and dash.  This was a 1500’ish meter swim and a 3 mile run.  Again, I fought the wetsuit idea, but decided I just wasn’t comfortable having not completed any cool temp open water swims this season without a wetsuit.  At this point (to borrow the phrase from Suzanne Erickson) I had become more of a "completer" than a "competitor".  The run felt good considering the "fun" that my body had endured on Saturday.  After the run I gladly retreated to my camping air mattress in the shade to recover before the next event.

After a very short rest, the 5 mile individual time trial commenced and brought on the leg burn.  It was from the beach parking area to the park entrance and back.  I don’t remember the hills being such a challenge during the Olympic Tri, but I suppose the cumulative effects of the Festivus events were now entrenched in what remained of my physical will power.  I have never participated in a time trial.  This being my first, I just tried to hit the wall in 5 miles and not pass out.  I must add here, that as the number of events progressed, the level of competition was still very high.  It seemed that this type of sustained torture attracted the elite triathletes, as well as a few non-swimming runners and cyclists with fresh legs as they were only participating in a few of the events. 

Last event of this epic weekend was the Team Trial.  It consisted of a 10 mile out and back.  The "SOB Squad" team had some minor adjustments and supplemented the roster just before race start.  Considering that Josh Pierson and I were on our 6^th event of the weekend, I think that we had a great “completion” of the team time trial. 

In closing, this was a very different experience than I could have imagined.  It was much more about the experience of testing your body’s ability to push a little harder even though fatigue has a firm grip on every muscle.  I was unsure how to approach the multiple events, so I elected to race each one as though it was my last.  I don’t know how to evaluate this strategy, but I thoroughly enjoyed the weekend.  And for what it's worth (nothing) I was the only 40-44 year old male that completed all the events....so that makes me 1st Place in my age group.   Lots of thanks’ish to Parker Edmiston, Dawn Edmiston, Doug Tinkham, Marty Eaton, and KatieBeth Pierson and the host of volunteers for putting together this event.  Another thanks to Gregg Gelmis (http://www.werunhuntsville.com/) and Katie Beth (http://katiebethpierson.smugmug.com/) for the great photos.  Shout out to Fleet Feet Huntsville TriathlonRacing Team for a great race day.

Frantic Frog 2013 Race Report

Frantic Frog Triathlon, 7 Sept 2013 

400m Swim, 24K Bike, 5K Run

This is my tenth triathlon of 2013.  I always like to mention what went on the day before a race.  It’s very rarely relevant to racing, although sometimes it can impact the race day performance.  I think it’s important to enjoy the sport and be competitive, but still enjoy the rest of your life.  Some of “us” (me included) can occasionally let our triathlon training take over our lives.  I haven’t met anyone lately who is making a living doing triathlons, and “triathlon” will not shed a tear when we are gone.  So keep it real and have fun racing. 

Rocketman 2011

Callaway Gardens 2012

On that note, my Friday night was spent watching local high school football.  Later that night the Bius Family drove up from South Mississippi to spend the weekend with us.  Great to see friends and looking forward to racing with my good friend Joel for the third year in a row.  He is the one to blame for my triathlon habit, since he talked me into doing the 10K as a relay team with him in 2011. 

A late night made race morning came early since I wanted to get a bike rack near the bike in/out.  Normal morning routine and I even shared my superstition nutrition with Joel.  Since he has been short on training time this year, I knew he could use the boost. We departed home at 0500 hours. 

As we arrived at Goosepond, it was evident that two cultures were trying to occupy the same space.  Bass fishing and triathlons…interesting mix.  Just for the record, most of the bass fishermen were there long before the triathletes began to arrive.  I enjoy bass fishing when I have the opportunity.  But I can honestly say I never got up at 3:00 a.m. to fish!  Wish I could say the same for triathlons.   

Even though we arrived at 6:00 and went straight to the bike racks, we still weren’t the first bikes to claim a space.  Packet pick was nice and simple, as always at this race.  Then I had time to set up my transition area and enjoy the time catching up with lots of folks at the race.  Got a good warm-up on the bike, but took longer than I normally do.  This resulted in no run warm-up, and I missed the team picture.  

Frantic Frog with Joel Bius 2013!!

I made it to the dock as the swimmers were lining up.  My bib number was 18, even though I think I was closer to 30^th going in the water.  No, I’m not that fast, but I had to be back in Madison to coach a soccer game that started at 11:00 so I took a “few” seconds off my estimated swim time.  Added bonus of being at the front of the line was seeing all of the fast people at the beginning of the race, instead of while they were finishing as I started my run. 

Last year, I was putting my goggles on as I jumped off the dock.  This year I was goggled up and ready.  Unfortunately, my right goggle must have been over my swim cap and filled up with water almost immediately.  I can swim with one eye, but at the turn buoy, the left goggle fogged up.  I should have emptied them and resealed, but (for some unknown reason) I didn’t.  Since I started at the front, there weren’t very many swimmers to follow in, and I couldn’t see anything but swimmers going the opposite direction.  I tried to stay towards the buoys and keep the outgoing swimmers in view.  This resulted in swimming back towards the starting dock and then angling over to the swim exit.  My gps track showed I swam 543 meters in 10:11.  Last year’s swim time was 07:41, so I’m thinking the swim might have been a little long this year.  I also compared some of the top swim times and most of them were approximately 1.5 -2 minutes longer this year. 

I made it to the shore eventually and jogged into T1.  This run felt a lot longer than it really is, but in and out.  It is a psychological boost to see all the bikes in transition as I’m headed out.  Who cares that it’s a time-trial start, I like the mental boost.

Right out of T1, Will Barnwell comes by me doing warp speed…mental boost gone.  Overall bike seemed to be a very fast course this year.  I passed a fellow age-grouper around mile three.  Since my calf sleeves cover my age, I politely let him know (as I passed him) that if he needed any motivation that we were in the same age group.  It must have worked because we proceeded to pass each other about 6 times for the remainder of the bike course.  This may have helped him, since he was 8^th in our age group and I came in 11^th, but it helped me to push harder on the bike, too.  My average bike speed was 22.3 mph compared to last year’s 21.8 mph. 

T2 was quick and my fellow age-grouper and I departed on the run at the same time. 

I introduced myself and enjoyed the first ¾ mile with Jeff Summerlin-Long.  He told me he usually runs about a 7:15 pace and I knew that I couldn’t keep that pace on the winding, rolling Frantic Frog run course.  He ended up running a 7:03 to my 7:22.  Another PR for my 5K pace in triathlons this year!  I also owe part of that time to Dink Taylor.  He started to pass me in the woods a few hundred yards short of the finish.  Yes, he started the swim way later than me, and is a fast bike and crazy fast runner, but out of principle I couldn’t let him pass me at the end.  I can say that I crossed the finish line ahead of a 6-time Alabama 50-miler state record holding runner.  He ran a 6:15 pace and finished in 1:09:20, great job Dink!!

All of this made for a great day and I still got to coach my younger daughter’s soccer game and watch my older daughter play soccer later in the afternoon.  Shout out to my pastor and friend, Andy Wulff, for completing his first road triathlon.  He beat his goal time by 4 minutes.  Great job by Doug Wright today, he also exceeded his goals for the race.  Fleet Triathlon Team took 12 of the top 50 overall places and 12 podiums.   Scottsboro Trisport Club puts on a quality race with great after party.  Looking forward to racing in the 40-44 age group here next year.  David Rawlings captured the 1st place podium this year in the 40-44 AG, and he only beat me by 9 seconds.  Maybe I won't have to ride a mountain bike in the rain to get a podium next year.

I mentioned in my last report how important it is to be fast in Transition.  Almost prophetic, since this race I was 57^th, 63^rd, and 53^rd in the respective race events.  However, due to my  transition times I ended up 39^th Overall.  Four weeks and “a taper” remaining before the Goosepond 70.3 grand finale!