Tobay Triathlon Time Trial

The Tobay Triathlon Time Trial (http://runnersedgetobaytriathlon.com/) . I call it that because I don’t run more than 20 miles per year, and I haven’t been swimming (real swimming anyways) since I was a freshman in college (1999). I’ve never been a fast runner at anything over 400m long, and I was a terrible swimmer in 1999. I’m not sure how I got talked into doing this thing actually. Anyways, this race was basically a 15k time trial with a mandatory water treading session before hand and a walk/jog cooldown afterwards.

The race is a 1k ocean swim, 15k bike on moderate rolling hills, and a 5k run that goes up a fairly steep hill to a water tower and back. One note about the swim: due to large amounts of rain the week before, the wastewater levels flooded into the bay that we were to swim in. The beach was closed to the public up until a few days before the race due to “unclean” water. Nice.

So Rich, TDK, Big Time, and myself were all racing. None of us knew what we were doing in the water. TDK and I managed to have wet suits, but bad swimmers are bad swimmers and nothing short of flippers and a snorkel is going to change that. At least we all are decent bikers and can make up some time there. Running? Ha, who knows what will happen that late in the race.

Swim:

Rich, TDK and myself all went off in the 4^th wave. Big Time went off in the 8^th or 9^th wave. This start was something else. I positioned myself within my wave according to my swimming ability (aka the very back) and when the gun went off, it was game on! I dove my head in, did about 3 or 4 full strokes of freestyle, moved about 24 inches, got kicked in the face, and swallowed down a gulp of mixed wastewater and saltwater. Hmmmmm. I stopped swimming and put my feet back on the ground (I hadn’t moved much) to look around. There were swimmers everywhere kicking and splashing. How am I supposed to swim like this? Well, let’s try it again. 4 strokes of freestyle and 24 inches later I was gasping for air like I’d just finished the CBTT.

Total forward progress thus far was about 2 meters. Great, 998 meters to go. This freestyle thing doesn’t work. And why aren’t I more boyant in this wetsuit thing? I tried about 4 strokes of breast stroke and actually moved forward about 5 or 10 meters before stopping again when I hit the guy next to me. I thought, Ok, maybe this swimming thing isn’t so bad, let’s man up and try freestyle again. This time I really dug deep and went maybe 6 full strokes before having to stop because I couldn’t breathe. I must’ve been swimming for 2 full minutes at this point and I hadn’t even cleared the 50m dock peir that was on my side. When I realized how little I’d moved thus far I almost quit right there just 50m into the race.

My next move was brilliant and saved my race: backstroke! Oh man am I a good back stroker. The way I see it backstroking is like doing crterium racing and freestyle is like doing hill climbing. Night and day difference. I finally got into a groove (at least a “groove” that would get me to the finish line some day) and went with it for a few minutes.

After 5 minutes or so of swimming on my back, I can faintly make out some yelling. I ignore it because hey, I’m trying to race here. The yelling gets louder so I decide to stop swimming and see what the deal is. Turns out the yelling was coming from some officials on a police boat that were trying to tell me to get back on course. I look around and I am in the middle of nowhere. Sweet.

Eventually I get back on course, but then the next wave catches me. I’m sitting there doing back stroke having no concept whatsoever of where I’m going and I’m running into people all over the place. Once again I try freestyle and nearly drown myself. How is it even possible to do this foolish stroke? So I go back to backstroke but decide to swim down the side of the course, but paying more attention to where I’m going this time.

This more or less repeated for the rest of the swim. When I got in heavy traffic I did resort to freestyling while holding my head out of the water. That worked OK but my neck hurt as a result for the next week. I finally got out of the water after 34 minutes of swimming. The fastest swim time was 13 minutes so I was 21 minutes back at this point. I think I was 1066^th out of 1100 people.

Transition 1:

I ran fast and passed lots of people! Apparently you’re supposed to take off your wet suit while you’re running. I missed that one. I got to my bike, and couldn’t see to take the darn thing off. Meanwhile my legs were cramping like crazy from running too hard or swimming or something, who knows. Ate some shotblocks, got my bike stuff on, good to go. Oh yeah, drinking real water without salt or wastewater in it was pretty much the best thing ever at this point, like drinking from the holy grail.

Bike:

The beginning of this is on a sidewalk. Yes, a sidewalk. Looking at results from previous years I couldn’t figure out why average speeds were so slow. This was definitlely the reason. The sidewalk section was a good 2 minutes long and you guys about 8 mph when you’re following out of shape people with no cycling experience that can swim fast (well swim faster than me which is not saying ANYTHING, I hope that’s clear by this point). I ended up being some dude on a front suspension mountain bike that didn’t even have toe cages for his pedals.

As soon as the course opened up I stepped on it. There are a lot of turns early on, and it felt like a crit race. Idiots were using the entire rode swinging from the outside, to inside, to outside, as I passed them using a faction of the road at a 5-10 mph speed differential. I was certainly flirting with the line of being unsafe, but I didn’t pay $90 and drive 5 hours to follow dudes on mountain bikes going 15 mph. Besides, I let them kick me in the face for 34 minutes during that event people call swimming.

I felt pretty good once I got going. Average power was really low, only 235 watts or so, but I think everyone must’ve been slow after the swim because I passed more people than I ever imagined possible. To put it in perspective, I started in the 4^th wave and got passed by people staged 20 minutes behind me as I came in 1066^th place. There were probably 800 people in front of me on the course. I passed people literally non-stop for the entire duration of the bike. It was pretty surreal.

The last 2 or 3 miles of the bike is the best part because it’s all downhill and your speed doesn’t dip below 30 mph. I felt like I was absolutely nuking. Biking is so much more fun than swimming or running. Coming into the center of town there’s a 90 degree turn with at least 4 or 5 officials yelling at racers to slow down for the turn. They were screaming at me but I refused to even touch my brakes. It’s a race and I’m all about being safe but come on, braking is for grandmothers. I finally did have to slow down and soft pedal the last 300m or so before the transition because it was backed up so much. They made us dismount and run our bike the last 50m or so into the transition zone which I found incredibely annoying. There goes my new cleats.

Transition 2:

I was in the far back part which meant running all the way across the pen and back again. Time was slow, but who really cares at this point. Not this guy.

Run:

My triathlon coach/oracle/ cool IMLP friend said not to run hard in the first mile. Take it easy and focus on crushing the last 2 miles was his advice. Seeing as this course was uphill for the first half taking it easy was no problems whatsoever. You could barely call what I was doing “running”. Speed walking was more like it. Nonetheless I was actually passing people despite basically walking, so it must not have been too too bad. I saw Rich on his way back as I was headed out, he was something like a mile ahead of me. No catching him. Actually I was pleased to see he wasn’t farther ahead of me. Turns out he’s not exact Michael Phelps either.

After the turnaround point we got to run downhill. I’d been running slow and was nice and stretched out, so I just let me stride open and flew down the hill. Boy did that feel good. Who knew that I was capable of running a short stretch without feeling like death? Amazing. That lasted for a solid half-mile before I got a stitch in my side.

I did actually push it a bit in the last half-mile. Some big dude (6’6” 220 lbs?) passes me and I was not about to go down without a fight. I hope on his wheel (what do runners call it?) and keep pace for about 100m before giving up. Yeah running is hard and my stitch hurt. What do I care about 1 place at this point anyways. I run down some side street, squeeze through a hole in a fence, jump over the train tracks (yes this was the official course), see Erica on the final right turn before the finish, and my race is over.

Overall:

I think my splits were like 34:50, 25:50, and 23:55 which was something like 1066/15/300. Good enough for 400^th overall. This one won’t be on my race resume any time soon but I can proudly say I had the worst (highest) swim time to bike time ratio. My swim time was almost exactly 9 minutes slower than my bike time. Only one other person in the entire race had a slower swim time than bike time, good job Big Time. With Rich’s surfing skills he was actually able to finish the swim an impressive 2 minutes faster than the bike. I think that makes him a swimming specialist. Good job man. TDK managed to finish 5 minutes behind me overall despite riding very solid steel framed bike from the 1950’s that weighs more than my full suspension mt bike. They should have a special category for him.

Results are at http://www.pigmantri.com/jmsracing/results08/tobaytri08b.html . Try and ctrl+F to search for my name and have a good laugh. No more swimming for this guy.