ET Indoor Tri (2/20/22)


(Photo courtesy of my parents – thanks to them for the guiding help!)

After the struggles in January, I re-started the swim coaching with Coach Joe.  Things had also gotten a little better on the other two aspects during training.  So going into this race of the series, I expected better outcomes.

That did occur with both the swim and the bike, but not the run.  In the swim, it would have gone even better (as I was told I was literally 2 strokes out from another length), but had lost time asking how much was left.  While treadmills have always created issues for me, the run was even harder this time.  I just couldn’t keep the heart rate and breathing down/at constant levels.  So I had to keep going through a loop of running for a few minutes and then walking to get things back to par before starting the cycle again.

While I had hoped for a larger improvement from Jan to Feb, it was still a good step forward.  I hope to build on these successes when the outdoor season starts for me in April.

ET Indoor Tri (1/23/22)


(Photo courtesy of Lee)

As I had mentioned last year, things did not go as planned.  What was supposed to have been a 1-2 week stint on IR after Cypress ballooned because of work and personal issues.  But I tried looking past all of that and towards the 2022 season.

For me, the season started with the ET Indoor Tri.  These are always fun, great events put on by Coach Joe and his team.

While I had hoped for better, the challenges from 2021 showed up in the first race of 2022.  My swim was shorter than normal by about 40m, my bike was shorter by about 1 mile, and my run was shorter by about a 1/4 mile. 

Even though the results weren’t what I had hoped for, it was still good to get back to some sense of ‘normalcy’.  I’m grateful to Coach Joe for continuing to bring back the series even while there were still some COVID concerns.  I’m also grateful to Lee for all of his guiding help as always. 

And the race will also serve as a ‘baseline’ for 2022.  I know that there are going to be challenges during the 2022 season as I work to get back into a rhythm after losing so much in 2020 and 2021. I’m planning for and looking forward to a successful 2022 season!

The COVID Effect – 5/2/20

“I give honesty without regret.” – Unknown senior (from Voices of Old People by Simon & Garfunkel)

And to be honest, the COVID pandemic has created a tremendous amount of frustration for me. This has included cancellations of multiple racees and has impacted my training. I just haven’t had the focus most of the last 6 weeks to get in everything I need to. I know it could be much worse, which is why it’s just temporary frustration instead of anger or just plain giving up on the 2020 season.

While I have lost multiple events, I was fortunate to get a 2nd Indoor Tri in in March before the shutdowns occurred. I truly love doing Coach Joe’s (Experience Triathlon) events, and had hoped to do the April one as well.

As a brief summary of the Feb/March ones, the swims went OK (with March’s going better), the bikes were both solid, and the March run was much better than Feb’s. Thankfully, there are still multiple ET outdoor races for this summer to look at doing. For those of you making schedule readjustments, I would strongly recommend looking at these as options:

6/14 – ET Batavia
7/12 – ET Lake Zurich
8/2 – ET Naperville
9/5 – ET Pleasant Prairie

Once the shut downs had occurred, I expected to see RDs do the right things. Whether this meant cancellations with refunds, rescheduling to the fall or deferring to 2021. And for the overwhelming majority, that’s what has occurred.

As just one example, the Shamrock Shuffle did full refunds in addition to still sending out the swag. Yes, that has and will cost them a lot of money to do. But IMO they’ll make it up in 2021 and beyond. Simply because anyone looking at it from the outside should say ‘that’s a RO that I want to give my money to’ , along with ‘I had X on my 2021 schedule for that same weekend, but I’ll look at doing the Shamrock Shuffle’. If it wasn’t already a permanent fixture on my race schedule, their actions this year would make it so.

So when the order was extended to May 31st, I expected something similar from my May RDs/ROs. One of them (Race Director X (‘RDX’) / Race Organizer X (‘ROX’)) made a 4th decision — turning a physical race into a virtual one without any of the other options mentioned before. I am using RDX/ROX going forward from here, and would ask those who know the real name NOT to Dox them. Frustrating, but that was the choice they made.

Their March e-mail mentioned ‘you will have everything by race day’. So in the spirit of making lemonade out of lemons, I thought ‘Okay, we’ll make the best of it… and simulate things with the race items.’ A few days prior to the event, I still hadn’t received the items, so I reached out. The response that I received was ‘we’ll send things soon… COVID has impacted our ability to do this.’

I have two issues with this: (1) there was a gap of at least 3 weeks between the two e-mails where they could have shipped items out and (2) from the way the e-mail reads, it sounds like they’re using COVID as a crutch. Yes, social distancing needs to be followed. And yes, COVID may be creating some minor delays. However, I don’t believe these delays can be contributed to it given how long of a lead time there was.

Given all of this, IMO what was supposed to be a physical race has now turned into one of those ‘$x for a charity’ races. You’ve probably seen them — $10-$15 for a medal/bib so you can do a virtual race. Because of this, I have asked ROX for a credit to be used for one of their future races. I know that they couldn’t control the initial change. But IMO, what it’s turned into is NOT what I bought — or what they advertised after it had to become a virtual race.

Hopefully things will reopen at the beginning of June so that I can salvage a big chunk of my 2020 season. Regardless, after 6 weeks of frustration, I am working on getting things in line so that I am ready for whenever it does start…

Double Dip (ET Batavia Tri) – 6/9/19

“Let’s play two.” – Ernie Banks

When I planned out my 2019 schedule, I tried extremely hard to give myself a break between Triathlons. However, Indy’s unplanned addition threw a wrench into that.

I had wanted to do Batavia for the past couple years. But the Dare2Tri camp was the same weekend in the past. With it being split into two camps this year, I was finally able to do it.

Having done the Naperville ET race a few times, I have become used to the ‘quarry madness’. Because of this, we seeded ourselves back far enough to minize it. The swim went better than I had hoped, even though it was a little odd. I say that because one side of the rectangle was in water so shallow that it made more sense to get up and walk than it did to try and ‘shallow swim’.

Headed out on the bike, I knew we’d be able to make up time and that it would go well. To that point, I believe we had a net pass of zero. Even after we had to stop and retrieve a dropped water bottle. Sure, people did pass us, but we were able to retake them before T2. It also felt like we were at 30+ several times during the course. And while I’m still not fully comfortable going/being aero for long periods of time, there were a couple of stretches that it paid off in.

Headed into the run, I knew it was going to be a long one. Almost all of the sanctioned Tris I do are a 5K run. This one was a 4.1mi run, which was the longest I had ever done in a Tri. Even though it was a longer run, the shade/overcast weather made it go really well. I was able to keep the normal run -> walk through aid stations that I wanted. The only other time I had to walk was at about mile 3 for another 20-30 seconds to catch my breath.

Also during the run, I misheard Michael. At the time, there was an older gentleman in front of us running at a much slower pace. We were at a point of getting ready to pass him when I heard Michael say ‘watch out for the turtle’. What heard was ‘watch out for the slow runner as we pass him’. What he really meant was to watch out for the snapping turtle that was by the side of the path — and not happy that we (all of us) had woken them up!

Thanks to Michael for guiding for me and to Coach Joe, Suzy and the rest of ET for putting on a great race as always!

Lake Zurich Tri (7/8/18)

My plan after PT Nationals was to hit it hard and crush the next race (Lake Zurich). But with work and other chaos, I unfortunately got little training in during the two week period. But with the success to this point, I wasn’t worried about the race.

After getting transition set up, we got in the water for a brief practice swim. The drift came up then, but we at least worked out all of the signals to try and correct it.

The swim went about as expected — the drift added much more distance than it should have. I can accept it adding 30 – 60 seconds, but in this race it was at least 8 minutes. Something that needs to be addressed in order for me to keep moving forward; and quickly.

Last year, the bike course was an out and back, with a couple of harry corners. This year, even though they changed it to a loop, one of those corners still existed. We had to contend with a moving truck on the course that didn’t realize it was a bad idea to pull out as we were on an uphill. But it still went well overall. Especially since this year I was much more confident on the downhils. Last year, we coasted on almost all of them; this year, we pedalled through almost all.

And then there was run… With the loop bike course, the run was reversed. This meant running up two large hills early on into the run instead of running up them at about 2 and 2 3/8 miles in. It was still a decent run, even considering that I couldn’t really see the course the last 800 – 1000 yeards. Running through planters and shadows would have been impossible without Lee’s help.

While there were some hiccups, I did improve on 2017’s time by 9 minutes. I also got to see one of my friends win their AG (25-29).

IMO, one very big improvement from 2017 to 2018 was putting Mr. Mic (Dave Kappas) on the PA. Night and day difference, IMO.

Hammer Powered Race (ET Indoor Tri) – 3/25/18

As I continue to look for a solution to the running issues, I’m continually trying new things. I know that there’s a full solution out there so that I don’t have numbness during the run. If I could just solve that Rubik’s Cube…

For Sunday’s ET Indoor Tri, I had added a new Hammer Nutrition product (Tissue Rejuvination) along with compression running socks into the mix. And with breakfast being a Hammer Bar with the last dose of Endrolytes and Heed in the bottles, it was a fully Hammer powered race.

As with the last Indoor Tri earlier this month, I had desired benchmarks going into it. While I didn’t hit all of them, and while just the bike improved for the 2017 race, it was still a good day. Not just because I felt more energy throughout it, but because I got to race with one of my Dare2Tri teammates (Val Chavez)!

Like last year, Todd guided for me for the Tri. But unlike last year, 1/2 lengths didn’t count in the pool. Knowing that and knowing where the time was led to me really pushing that last length to make sure it counted.

After changing, we headed to the spin bikes. I was glad that I had changed into my bike bibs, especially at about 26-27 min in when that triangle started hurting. Even more evidence that the saddle upgrade was a really good idea and will pay dividends in 2018 when I don’t have bibs.

My focus for the treadmill was to run the entire 20 minutes without stopping. And if it hadn’t been for spit, I would have made that happen. At about 12:30 in, I couldn’t get the spit in my throat to go back down and started minorly choking on it. As I wasn’t going to spit on the treadmill or floor, I had to walk for about 20-30 seconds to get that taken care of before going back to running.

While the jury’s still out on the new Hammer tool, I will say that the compression socks were a good purchase. A couple times during the run, I could feel the start of tingling that eventually goes to numbness. But the socks helped to stop that in a couple steps. I will of course continue to play with both during the two runs I have coming up.

Naperville Tri – 8/6/17

Since I started competing in races in 2014, a beer has always followed the race. Whether it’s included with part of the post-race party or it’s the first thing I grab when I get home, I’m celebrating the finish pretty quickly after the race. This routine changed after Naperville though – more on that at the end.

Naperville was the first official Triathlon that I did, and has become my favorite since. Not just because it’s done really well (between PEM and ET), but also because it gives me an opportunity to publicly thank the local businesses that help / have helped to support me. I would not be at this point without the support from ALL of them, and I’m extremely grateful to them.

As in years past, everything got set up so Terri could guide for me. We got some practice in on the ‘new’ tandem and with the new gear, and were set to go for the race. On race morning, when we set up in transition, Terri noticed someone had majorly misracked (it goes 17, 18; not 17, xxxx). We headed to the beach start believing that an official would notice it and handle.

We started after the elite racers and got into the ‘full contact’ swim melee. So many people trying to climb over / swim over us like every year in Naperville so far. And I could swear that near the final buoy that another athlete physically pulled me upright out of the water. This is a perfect example of where rule K.48 would have been very helpful. Even with these extra obstacles, the swim / 100 was right on target.

After transition, we headed out onto the tandem for 12.4 miles (two loops). Things went well, although it’s apparent that I need to get the saddle addressed before 2018. My lower region keeps falling asleep / getting uncomfortable mid race. And for a sprint race, I’m not going to add another 10 minutes for on/off of bike bibs.

Up until we headed out on the run, it had been cloudy and cool. But as we started out, the sun broke through and it heated up. The first 1.5 miles wasn’t too bad, but I did have to stop at about that point to stretch out. I also had the same feet tightening up issue I’ve had all year. Even though it wasn’t a great run, still better than several from this season. We finished about 5 minutes faster than 2016.

A few notes from / post race —
1) The new nutrition program worked out well, including the ‘emergency’ capsules. I will continue to use that going forward.

2) That the Karma Police always gets their man (or woman). Looking at the results, it appears the person who grossly misracked was DQed. Moral of the story is play by the rules…

3) I’m not sure which part of the race did it to me, but for the rest of Sunday my body was in pain. When we made stops headed north, I think my limping shuffle probably imitated that of an 80+ year old…

So back to where I started this blog – post-race beer. The timing just happened to work that we were headed up to WI that afternoon where a pony keg of local beer (Tribute Brewing Company) was waiting. So instead of having the standard PBR at home, I waited a long time for the Tribute pint. Yes, the beer is that good, and yes, the wait was well worth it!

Early bird registration is open for 2018 if you’d like to join us next year! Register on web site.

Roller Coaster Bike Ride (ET Lake Zurich) – 7/9/17

Over the 3 years I’ve been competing, I’ve run into some really great Race Organizers (ROs) and Race Directors (RDs). I know that if they’ve running the race, or their name is on it as a title sponsor, it’s going to be a good one. One of the many that falls into that category is Experience Triathlon (ET) and Coach Joe (owner of ET).

Thus, I was looking forward to the ET Lake Zurich Triathlon even though I’d never raced it before. And two weeks after racing PT Nationals (PC Open), I was ready to take on a new challenge – especially the very hilly bike course.

As every race sends out a multitude of e-mails (registration reminder, packet pickup, athlete guide, etc.), it’s sometimes easy to tune these e-mails out and just hit delete after the first few. Thankfully, I don’t; if I had, I would have missed out on the race. I had it in my calendar that it was an 8A start, which would mean transition was 6-7:30 or so. However, transition was actually 4:45-6:30. I saw this in enough time to make all the needed arrangements.

Once everything was set up in transition, we thought we had at least an hour to kill given the schedule. So Lee and I headed down near the beach with my parents to watch the Olympic athletes. About 15 minutes before the first wave of Sprint was supposed to start, my parents noticed Sprint athletes making the turn to swim in. Apparently the Sprint start had gotten moved up and we weren’t aware. So we had to scramble down to the beach and queue up.

On advice of my coach, I tried to stay further right after we started to avoid crowding at the buoys and getting sum over. While that may have helped some, it also meant that I went too far right at one point – almost off course. As well, since we were at least 2 start waves behind where we should have been, I ended up getting tangled in less strong swimmers mid-course. These two in combination caused me to lose a couple minutes in the water. And I still can’t tell you what the swim distance was. The event site listed it as 400m; my timing says it should have been a 750m swim; the race result averages make it look like a 1500m swim.

After one of my fastest transition times, we headed out onto an extremely hilly bike course. While the average was about 19mph, I know that there were places that we were at 25mph+. Just simple laws of gravity / physics. This bike course also made it very evident that I need to get the saddle upgrade done ASAP. I haven’t been able to afford it yet – if you’d like to help support me so I can, you can do so through my USABA fundraising page.

Coming back into transition, Pleasant Prairie T2 almost repeated itself. However, I realized the re-clip this time and unclipped the left foot a second time in time. Because of having to push so hard through the hills, I was concerned about the run being a mess. Even though there were parts that I had to walk while my feet unclenched, it went really well. And having one of my teammates cheering us on as we made the turn into the finish chute made it that much easier to finish!

While it wasn’t a perfect race, there were several bright spots and learning lessons. I know that it will all click soon and I’ll start hitting the benchmarks I want to. Until then, I’ll just continue trying and learning from what does go right/wrong.

Lake Zurich was the beginning of a very long stretch of races/camps. Please watch for blogs on the rest coming soon!

National Beatings – Progress Report – 3/19/17

I love doing Experience Triathlon (ET) events. Coach Joe, the entire staff and all of the volunteers do such a great job with the events. I wish I’d been able to do the other two ET indoor triathlons, but the timing just didn’t work.

Going into this event, I had definite numbers that I wanted to hit on each of the disciplines. Not only would it be a good progress test to see where I was at, but also a chance to find/work out flaws. Even though I didn’t hit those numbers, it was still a good day and I found several things to work out prior to the outdoor season.

Specifically –
Swim: Managing torpedo kicks and breathing. One of the torpedo kicks was so strong that I ended up gliding under the lane lines. Not a huge issue since there was an open lane, but it would be in any of the outdoor races. While my breathing is getting better, I still need to work on it for mid to late race to make sure I can finish strong. During this swim, I couldn’t get enough of the CO2 out and was struggling in the last 6-7 lengths to get it done. I’ve already talked with my head coach on the breathing and am working out several things with that.

Bike: Being able to more easily clip in and making sure that I’m pushing harder in the first several minutes when my body is trying to recover from the swim. I thought I was going faster than I actually was during that first 8 min or so until Todd told me what I was at. Hopefully the tandem derailer will get put back on and I’ll get the loaner upright soon so I can get a lot more clip practice in.

Run: Making sure that a sports drink is in my water bottle instead of just plain water. I had Tailwind in there and it helped a lot. I am going to be trying a couple others during training, and go with whichever works best. Having that extra burst meant that I only had to walk once for about 30 seconds. That’s about in line with the Turkey Trot from last fall, which was my most consistent 5K.

It was back to training after this race as I continue to push towards the spring season.

And for any of you who have these as open dates, I would STRONGLY recommend signing up for the following:

ET Batavia – 6/11/17
ET Lake Zurich – 7/9/17
ET Naperville – 8/6/17

Indoor Tri Wrap-up & Training – 2/28/16 – 4/14/16

MITCS

First of all, sorry for the long hiatus. Life has been extremely busy since late February and I haven’t had much time for blogging. This and the next few entries dated prior to today (5/20/16) are all ‘ctach up’ articles that have been in my queue to post.

After the last Indoor Tri post, I did two more – the final event in the MITCS series and the final event in the ET series. The first went really well; the latter had bumps. Specifically, towards the end of the bike at ET I felt really constipated. So I lost 4 minutes of the run while I was still taking care of that.

Overall, the Indoor Tri season was a great experience. Not only did it give me an opportunity to have targets to push for as I was training, it also gave me experience for the outdoor season. I plan on doing both the MITCS and ET series next year. I will not do Life Time again – IMO it was far too crowded, and just not a great experience. Combined with the fact that it’s the only for-profit race that I’ve had to pay for my guide, just not on my list for next year.

I greatly appreciate everyone who helped me throughout the Indoor season. Specifically Coach Joe, Todd, Lee & Steven who all really helped to make it work out.

In between the Tris and once the season ended, I was back into the pool. Although it isn’t a big jump, I was able to cut another 10 seconds off of my CSS time in the pool. I know that every little bit helps.