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.

Rocketman Triathlon 2013 - Best Olympic Tri in Alabama

Excuses out of the way up front...I have been traveling the 2 weekends prior to the Rocketman.  No matter how good my intentions were, training suffered.  Schedule and/or weather really took a toll in the 3 weeks leading up to the race. 

Now on with the story of Alabama's finest Olympic Triathlon --- ROCKETMAN!

This is my 2nd year to race Rocketman (not counting 1 year on a relay), so I felt confident that I could improve my times and be able to say "PR" when it was over (caveat with the swim time/distance). Pre-race day schedule....Sleep in, Rocketman Volunteer, coach soccer game, finish Rocketman Volunteer, and Daddy-Daughter date...Nothing to motivate you for race day like Smurfs 2.  Woke up at 0400 so I could secure a good parking spot, since rack position is based on race number.  Parking was different this year, so showing up early wasn't really worth it.  But it still gave me plenty of time to mentally prepare without feeling rushed.  I unsuccessfully tried to bribe my way to the volunteer parking (it was a little closer). 

Found my bike rack and set up transition.  It wasn't a bad spot, but was middle of the row about 3 rows from the front of transition, and I knew I would end up going down the wrong row coming out of the water.  Got in a short warm-up on the bike.  Not the best warm-up with traffic congestion and I prefer a flat area to do a few openers.  A little surprised to see a uniformed USCG Auxiliary Commander come cruising around traffic in my lane angrily pointing at bikers (trying to warm up) to get out of his way.  I really wanted to stop right in front of his car and ask him why he didn't show up earlier. It would have been very entertaining, but I decided I didn't have the time to deal with the tardy Commander.  I appreciate their support on the swim course, but this guy was a hazard to all the bikers and had a bad attitude.  Finished up my bike warm-up and made a short 1 mile run to make sure all the joints were awake. 

Again, I am late for the picture?..Nope, it's picture time and as I'm leaving my running shoes in transition I spot Gregg (woo hoo!).  I remind him our team picture is at the swim start in about 10 seconds.  When I get to the swim start and finish the team picture, I decide to take a look up river to try and find the first turn buoy.  Can't see it!  It's out there somewhere.  As the swim numbers began to tick off, I line up 3 places behind Dennis Mix.  Objective is to catch his feet and draft the whole course.  I ended up entering the water 2 "goes" behind him and never found him.

SWIM:  Found a set of feet early on as they passed me, but after a few hundred yards the swimmer kept slowing down to site.  This caused me to keep running into his feet.  So I decided to pass him and swam the rest without the advantageous draft.  Overall, the swim went well.  I avoided the crowds and held a pretty straight line between the buoys.  I think I left a little speed out there, but came out of the water feeling good and ready to bike.

T1:  Steve Skonieczny and I came out of the water at the same time and fortunately he was racked right next to me and he remembered which row our bikes were on.  I followed him into transition and made it out of T1 in 44 seconds.  This was 2nd fastest in both the Military Division and in my AG.  I point this out to show that I have no "free speed" left.  If I want to get faster, I've got to train more or buy it.

BIKE:  Bike course was as expected.  I used 2 Apple Cinnamon Hammer Gels and sipped a one-hour bottle of Hammer Sustained Energy.  Still testing out different nutrition strategies as I prepare for the Goosepond 70.3.  This is my home drone and didn't hold any surprises.  The only excitement came as I was making my way up the final hill and noticed something in the road.  At first I thought a biker had wiped out.  Then I realized there was no bike, so maybe a runner had tripped over their feet.  Alas, as I came closer it was Gregg Gelmis taking another set of awesome triathlon photos.  The Huntsville triathlon/running community is incredibly fortunate to have Gregg.  He takes awesome pictures and makes them available right away.  The negative side of the day was the wind.  It felt great pushing 26+mph on the east bound sections of the course, but this was negative by the 16 mph average ont he west bound sections.  I averaged 20.3 mph which is 2 mph faster than last year. IF I can pick up that much speed again before next year's race, there could be a podium in the MILITARY category.  Always optimistic.

T2:  Another fast T2, even though I decided to wear socks with the new Bondi Speed Hokas. I've only been running in the Hokas for about a month and haven't tried them sockless.  I can say they are almost as light as my Sauconys and they provide incredible cushion, especially on a hilly, gravel course section like Rocketman. Even though they are heinously ugly and look as big as Little Bill's shoes.   I only have about 50 miles on them, but I’m very satisfied with their performance. 

 RUN:  You can’t always compare the swim because the distances can vary from year to year, believe it or not.  You can’t always compare the bike, because a wind can make a difference.  But the run is usually pretty much the same, minus some minor chance of an unseasonal heat wave.   I wanted to break 8 min/mile this year.  Got the first mile in at this goal, but slowed down after that and ended up averaging an 8:16 pace.  This was 14 seconds per mile faster than last year, so..wait for it….PR!!! 

This course brings it all….trail, gravel, hills and heat.  Oh yeah, and that wind on the bike course, never saw it on the run course.  The “Water In A Bag” on the race course was great.  No it didn’t taste like heaven, but it was wet, cold, easy to drink, and served a dual purpose of cooling, if you “stored” it next to your skin before drinking it.  It was definitely easier to drink from than a cup, and you could carry it and consume it at your own pace between aid stations.  Furthermore, I discovered that if you happen to have a spare bag and you’re approaching the next station you can use it to squirt the runners going in the opposite direction….not that I would…, but you can.  I’m not sure that this was an intended use. 

Made it 7/29 in the Military category at 2:39:08.  This would have put me at 19/38 in my AG.  This was another well directed race by The Rocketman Mike Gerrity.  Kudos to Katie-Beth Pierson as the volunteer coordinator.  As a racer, it seemed to be a very smooth race.  Saving the best for last was the Rocket Wedding.  I’m not sure that I will ever again have the opportunity to attend a wedding at the race venue immediately following the race.  Triathlon weddings are pretty cool, and I generally don’t like going to weddings.  Congratulations to Mike and Debbie!   See you all at Frantic Frog.  !!