Soma Triathlon - Triathlon1/2 Ironman

I knew TTL would be low visibility but man, they weren't kidding when they said you cannot even see your hand in front of your face! I felt like I had my head in a mud puddle.

My goal coming into this swim was to just not panic and have to pull up 100 yards in which was the case in my first two events. When it was time for our group to get in the water I focused on keeping my breathing relaxed and my mind calm. On the gun I made sure to start extra slow and just talk myself through the first 100 yards or so. What a relief when the point came that I said, "hey, no panic today!" and talk about a feeling of accomplishment.

Way slow swim overall but I expect nothing different. Definitely a work in progress and I'll be faster next year. More contact than I've experienced in my other two events as I had someone grabbing my ankle 1/3 way into the swim, had a few people knock into me and I most likely knocked into some others as well. Surprisingly it didn't panic me at all but I did sit up for a moment just to get a bearing on wear these people were so I could move away since none of us were setting any records out there. Only other thing to note was that it seemed difficult to site at TTL, especially while swimming into the sun. There just are not many good landmarks to get a bearing on and as such I was always having to adjust and correct and probably swam twice the distance. Need to work on swimming straighter too ;)

Not a whole lot. Obviously I would swim faster if I could and I'll work on that this off season with a big swim focus.

In, out, no issues.

Too fast. I went out with the idea of pushing the bike more than my last two events just to see what I could or could not get away with. In my first HIM, Steelhead in August, my goal was to shoot for 135 avg HR on the bike. At Soma I decide to push it to 140-145 and it was too much. Came off the bike with a decent time considering my limited cycling experience but I would come to regret it later.

One other big thing to note. I had my gel flask loaded with PB GU to be my nutrition on the bike along with a bottle of Skratch. During the first loop I hit a good sized bump at the Mill/Rio Solado intersection and watched my flask go flying through the air. That left me with eating off the course which was power bar gels. Ugh, I have never been able to tolerate those that well and this was no different. I took in ~200-250 cals/hr and the gels would haunt me.

Maybe take a bit off the effort but I figure if you never test your limit you'll never really find what your limit is. I found it on this day.

After my quick 12 week marathon build I'm putting the running on the back burner and it will be time to really concentrate on bike speed. Right now it is the single biggest limiter on my performance, both on the bike and more importantly on the run. I cannot continue to run so slow off the bike and the only fix to that is more time on the bike.

in, out, no worries.

Absolutely, positively, dreadful run which was set up by too hard an effort on the bike and not helped by a horrible bloated stomach the entire way. I felt like the guy in Spaceballs that had the daily special.

Set off on the run on what I thought was a very relaxed, maintainable pace of ~7:40 miles. Mile and a half into the run and I knew my stomach was going to be an issue along with my fried legs. All I could think about was losing my flask and having no back up. "Adapt and move on" is all I kept telling myself but my generally iron stomach was having none of it. FWIW, I am not blaming the gels on my horrible run as it was the bike, the bloated stomach was just there to make my pain more misery.

Ran the first lap halfway decent and then started fading into the night after mile 8 or so. By mile 9 my legs were toast and I was just trying to not throw everything up that was brewing a violent mess in my stomach. Started walking the aid stations as a way to get some temporary relief as well as insure I could get some water on me to keep cool. The last few miles were miserable and I just tried my best not to walk it in.

It all started on the bike so go back up there and read.

Tried getting some food in me but couldn't stomach anything. First time ever I've actually not wanted to eat. Finally my gf and buddy came over with a slice of pizza and a beer and that was magic.


bike fitness


Glad I signed up for this race last minute because I surely would have regretted missing it as it was my last opportunity to race for the year. It was awesome having it in my back yard but to be brutally honest, I'm not a fan of the course. I'm sure I was a bit spoiled by Steelhead's course but the bike here was just too many u-turns and I didn't care for the three loop course. The upside though was the multi loop course made it feel like there were 5000 people out there.

Really looking forward to a big off season of training, taking everything I learned from my rookie year this year and going under 5hrs next year. There is a lot of low hanging fruit that I think can save me a good chunk of time out there.