Alive With Sport

The second half of my Oliver race report is here. I don’t want to stretch this race report out too much longer… but the reason why I’m reflecting is that I’d like to learn from what happened on the run – specifically on the second half of the run. Short story, I ran out of gas. For the long story, keep on reading.

I felt great coming off the bike. I came in just behind one girl, and noticed that only one bike from my age group’s rack had returned. My head space was great – and I was feeling great. I wasn’t running hard, just steady. I definitely felt the extra effort on the bike, but was still running well. I passed a bunch of folks including one girl within the first 5km. At the first turn around, I could see some very strong racers behind me so I knew I was in a very good position. My headspace was awesome. The run hurt, but nothing out of the ordinary.

I’m not exactly sure where it all went wrong. But I definitely ran out of gas. Somewhere in the first loop I discovered that my stomach was saying, “No way, Jose to gatorade.” I tried to get a gel in me on the way back but had to spit about half of it out. I dropped my fuel belt at the 11km mark – since gatorade was a no go. The second loop was all about determination. Physically, I wasn’t doing well and started getting passed by racers. I don’t usually get passed on the run, so that was interesting. Amazingly, my headspace was still really positive. It was, however, taking a lot of energy to keep it there.

By 15km, it hurt. Hurt, like the IronMan run hurt. My mental energies had to focus on, “Keep on running – Do not walk!” I was passed by the final fast racer at 19km. In ~4km, she gained 4 minutes on me. This is bad. I know I can do better but I am really proud of myself. I did very well to keep positive and keep going. It was a very huge mental challenge… and I met the challenge. This is a first step. At IronMan I walked, here I kept running. I am proud of this. By the last kms, I was feeling the bouyant energy of a best ever finish – and my physical crash on the run melted away. The big personal best of 5:23:13 is 4 and a half minutes faster then the last time I raced… and this includes the extra 3 min+ transition that they’ve added to the course. You can see from the picture that I was really pleased with this finish.

Reflecting back, I can see that the extra effort on the bike plus not enough calories taken in on the bike hurt me on the run. I ran out of gas. But I’ll trade 15min faster on the bike for 5 min slower on the run. That’s a good trade. But, I know that I don’t need to make this trade. I think I can go the same pace on the bike, be smarter with my nutrition ie., eat more for the run, and pull of the 1:48 that I know I’m capable of. This race was really good for me. It made me realize how much more I have to experience in racing. I’m still really new to triathlon racing… and I’m still learning. As Calvin, says, “It’s like renovating a kitchen. You pull away a wall, and find out that you didn’t even know what was behind there. After your done with all the improvements, you’ve got totally new granite counters and fancy cupboards. It’s very exciting” Oliver helped me pull away one wall… the next wall will be breaking that 5h20 barrier. I’m really looking forward to ripping that one down.