Burlington, VT 8/20/2011
Several
months after I completed this race, I finally get around to writing about it. I hope my memory treats me well.
Preface: The age group national championship is the highlight of many amateur triathletes. It's the race that brings the best of the non-paid best. The national championship is one you have to qualify for. Qualifying for the national championship requires you to be in the top-10% in your age group at any USAT event by a certain date. There are also regional qualifiers that have a wider qualification standard, but also attract a more competitive field. The standard for the regional qualifiers is top-33% in your age group or top-5 in your age group (whichever qualifies more). These standards do make qualifying for nationals a proud feat, but there is some silver lining, especially in the younger and older age groups. Triathlon is a 30s and 40s sport. Meaning that most of the races are comprised of people in their 30s and 40s. That being said, most of the races I do have very few people in my age group. That makes qualifying not too difficult. However, I still have to race my best. I qualified for the 2011 Age Group National Championship last September at the Buzzards Bay Triathlon, where I got 1st in my age group out of 7.
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Last time I went to nationals was in 2009, and that was in Tuscaloosa, AL. That was a lot of fun, but that race was my very first olympic distance triathlon, and I struggled mightily. It was also a very expensive trip. I didn't think I would do another national championship because of the combination of how expensive it is to travel (especially with a bike), and the fact that I would never compete at that level with the amount of training I do. But when they announced that nationals would be in Burlington, VT in 2011, I thought that I'd be okay doing that again. I wouldn't need to fly there!
The timeline up to the race varied quite a bit for me. I trained lots last winter, in preparation for the two half-ironmans I was doing in April and in June. One I finished those, my training all but dropped off the map. I started enjoying the summer more, and getting rather lazy. I didn't stop completely, but I didn't continue the amount I was doing early this year. But carpe diem!
I went up to Burlington Friday morning to do all the check-in stuff: myself for the race, my bike at the race site, all our rooms at the hotel. My family and Laura and her mom were coming up later that day. It was a beautiful day, and the drive up was very enjoyable, all 3.5 hours of it. When I got to Burlington, the main hotel where the check-in and expo was happening, was right off the highway. The parking lot was a frenzy. You'll never see a parking lot worth more money than you will at the main hotel of the triathlon national championship. The bikes most of these people have are crazy expensive! I went inside the hotel, found my race number, checked in, and walked around the expo for a bit. The expo is, in my opinion, a crock. People who do triathlons spend more money, on more crap, than anyone I know. And the vendors at these expos really take that in mind. There are booths at the expos that are brand new training technologies that will "better your training efficiency" or "increase your speed in the water", and people buy into it. And that is a huge negative against their credit cards because most of the stuff they are selling, also costs quite a bit of money. Granted, I would love to have all the equipment that they are selling, but I am not going to spend $1,000 for a machine I lie on to get a better swim workout. After leaving the expo, I went out for lunch, and then met up with Dave and Debi who were also doing the race. We made our ways down to the race site to check-in our bikes and the transition areas. Later, everyone else showed up in Burlington, and we spent the night eating dinner and going to the hotel pool.
Race day: Woke-up real early to put on my race tattoos (new temporary tattoos you put on yourself), eat some breakfast, and be ready for Dave to pick me up at 5:30am. When we got to the race site, it was waiting time. It's normal to get to the race site an hour before the race starts, just to warm-up and start getting rid of your nerves. The start waves for Nationals goes off every 4 minutes (quite like most races I do), but each wave is a specific age group (M20-24 or F35-39 etc). So it takes awhile to start your race if you are one of the last few waves. There was I think about 20 waves, and my age group (M25-29) was one of the last this time. So from the actual start of the race, I had to wait an hour and a half until I could actually start racing.
SWIM
The start of the swim was really cool. We were all corralled into and through the boat house on Lake Champlain. The whole boat house was on the water, so we could feel the bobbing and swaying every step. We then had to jump into the water from the pier to get to the start line. I don't have any pictures available for the race, but it was pretty cool to see some of the pictures the race took of people jumping into the water from the pier. The water was a great temperature, and it appeared from watching the other waves do the swim that there was not going to be any issues with current or wind. I was excited, anxious, and confident. I had accepted the fact that I would not be racing Nationals to compete, it's just impossible to train the amount that most of the top-level racers do with the life I am living. Racing for the pureness of fun is all I cared about this morning. By the time gun went off to start swimming, all my nerves had died down. I focused on getting into a good swimming rhythm, and making sure that I sighted the buoys every 10 strokes or so to make sure I was swimming in the right direction. Half-way through the swim there was this turn buoy that made a right hand turn that had has facing the shore. Unfortunately this direction was East, so after making the turn, nothing was visible; the sun was right in everyones face. I couldn't see the next buoy, I had no idea where I was suppose to swim, so I just followed the legs of someone swimming in front of me. He couldn't see either. By the time I noticed where we were, and where we were suppose to be swimming, we ended up way too far left than we should've, and it added on a couple hundred yards of swimming.
It was a consensus after the race from everyone on my team that it was impossible to see for everyone. Everyone had an issue with sighting after that buoy. The last hundred yards or so of the swim was pretty cool. We swim along the shore and up a boat ramp. But swimming along the shore was cool because I breathe solely on my right side, and that was the side that the shore was on. There were so many people everywhere, that it was motivating to finish the swim. I was expecting to swim in the 26 - 28 minute range based on previous swim times for this distance, but what can you do, sometimes the sun doesn't want you to meet a goal.
SWIM stats: 1.5km swim (~0.9 miles), 33:26
BIKE
The bike course was an out-and-back loop that started out in riding through the streets of downtown Burlington. Burlington is a beautiful city. Out-and-backs are cool because you can see where you stand with the rest of the race. You can tell how far behind the leaders you are based on how long it takes from the point you pass them going opposite directions to the point where you turn around. You can also see where people are behind you. But for this race, with all the start waves they had, it's impossible to tell where you stand in the race. There are just people everywhere, all the time. The course was beautiful. We rode through the city, then on a stretch of the highway they closed down (that was cool), and finally through areas of Vermont you that you picture Vermont to be. People had chairs lined up on their front lawns cheering everyone on. The mountains in the back-drops were amazing. But it was very hilly! It seemed like I was constantly going up and down the whole way. When I ride hills with some friends during training, I am usually very good. I am known within my group to be a very proficient climber. But whenever I do races that have hills in them, I do awful. People were passing me left and right for the majority of the first half of the ride. It wasn't until the second half that I started to get into a better rhythm and basically kept my position and started passing people. However, about a mile or two from the bike finish, my chain falls off my bike. I think I was trying to power up a small hill to fast or something, and pushed the chain right off the gear. When I stopped to fix it, all the people I had passed on this second half of the ride re-passed me. Bummer.
BIKE stats: 40 km ride (~25 miles), 1:20:16
RUN
The start of the run took us up this residential road that you can see from anywhere in the spectator/transition area. And everyone was dreading the start of the run. This road was probably the steepest, longest road that I have ever run on. I passed by my dad near the bottom of the hill and just started walking up it. I guess he was sitting there watching everyone struggle up it. What a guy! It was awful. People were running by me, but literally I could reach out and touch them for a long time because you couldn't run up this thing. It was brutal. By the time I got to the top, my legs were so sore, they didn't want to run. I had to make my legs move. Besides that first hill, this run course was one of my favorite run courses I have done. The first half ran through residential roads, quiet and clean. The second half was all through this state park. It was great, but my time was slow. A few miles out, I was struggling with the heat, grabbing water and ice at every aid station, and walking a bit here and there. Someone who was yo-yoing with me for the last few miles, noticed I was having a hard time with the heat, and gave me the oddest suggestion I have ever gotten while racing. She told me to stick the ice down my shorts. She said that would help cool me off. At first I was in kind of shock and awe. Who tells a stranger to put ice down their pants?! I tried it though, and it helped immediately! I ended up running past her, and continued running the last 2.5 miles without stopping at another aid station or to walk the rest of the way. I think if she didn't help me out with that, I would have run over an hour again. A time I hated seeing next to my results for this distance. Running use to be my thing. In high school, I would go out for a 5 mile jog and be back before an episode of Spongebob was over. Sometimes it's completely frustrating how much I've lost in the run game. I struggle on the runs in my races (for me). Oh well for now. The race finish was exhilarating. Seeing everyone that was there cheering me on helped push me the last half mile. Then there was the finishing chute. It was like the finishing chute you see in big races on tv; with carpeted flooring, walls with sponsors all over them, and a huge banner across the top.
RUN stats: 10 km run (~6 miles),
57:14
We spent some time in Burlington after the race, grabbing lunch and enjoying the weather, before we headed home. I wish that we had stayed another night, because it was truly a great city, but we didn't this year. Overall, I loved racing in Burlington. I definitely didn't have the best race of my life, but I really enjoyed every moment I was there.
