Brian's Next Blog Attempt

Once again I've delayed the posting of a race report for far too long.  Here's my attempt at a quick entry:

While the weather was great for most of our trip, this was not the case on race day.  The remnants of Hurricane Ike just happened to pass through DC the day of our race.  According to a sign we saw on the way back after the race, the temperature was 99 degrees with what I'm sure was 100% humidity.  It was HORRIBLE.  We got to transition at around 5:30 in the morning and 15 minutes later I texted Ryan (who was still up partying after his race the day before):

It's quarter to 6.  The sun is not up.  I am not yet working out.  I am sweating from the heat/humidity. :(

So I was worried I was in for a rough day.  I got transition setup pretty quickly, went on a warmup run, then met the team for our pre-race picture and final coach's speech. 

I then went back to transition, grabbed my swim gear and headed to the bathroom.  As usual, the line was HUGE and my wave start was fairly early, so I didn't think I'd be able to make it to the portapotty and still make it to my wave start.  At my last two races I learned how to pee in my wetsuit during the swim warmup.  Unfortunately here, we got corraled in a pen and were only allowed in the water just before our wave start.  Based on past experience, I knew I wouldn't be able to relax enough to go in those precious few moments between my entry in the water and the starting gun, so I decided drastic measures were necessary.  I decided to put on my wetsuit and practice peeing in it outside of the water.  This turned out to be fairly easy to do, though while I was standing there with urine slowly dripping out onto my foot, a guy came up to me on the other side of the fence and asked me to move so he could jump over.  I let him in and briefly considered flinging a little on him, but decided it would be best not to anger my competition so early in the race.

As I stood waiting, I suddenly heard the most screeching, horrific rendition of the nation anthem that I've ever heard.  Only later did I learn that it was being played on an electric violin by a guy in a wetsuit who then jumped in the water and did the race.  I thought that was pretty cool once I found out what it was!  I'm just glad I don't have to listen to it again.

Finally the race started and off I went.  We were supposed to swim towards under the second arch of the nearest bridge.  Somehow I got off course and ended up swimming towards the first arch.  I eventually realized it and corrected, but not until I was pretty close to it.  Having goggles that I couldn't really see out of didn't help me sight properly.  The warm was a pretty warm 77 degrees--just one degree short of being a non-wetsuit legal race.  As I was really worrying about overheating on the swim, so I followed some advice I got and took of my cap.  During the swim, I also stopped a few times to get fresh cooler water in my wetsuit.  As I came in, I got off course a few more times and at one point had to totally stop and take off my goggles to see where I was going.  I know--I need new goggles.  It's not like they are all scratched up or anything, it's just that they are so rough inside that no amount of defogger can prevent them from becoming nearly opaque. Despite all this, I did manage to finish the swim in 31 minutes, which was my swim PR by 2 minutes. (Okay--now I just noticed my official time was 33:08, which is still a PR, but only by 29 seconds.)

Thanks to the well labeled transition area, I found my bike with no problem and managed to do something I'd never practiced before--I did a shot of Hammer Gel while in transition.  I made it out on the course without a problem.  The bike course was really nice and probably 90% shaded.  I was still worried about overheating, so I didn't push too hard, but I never felt the heat at all during the bike.  About 20 minutes into the bike, right as some guy was passing me, something went wacky.  All the sudden my bike bottle went flying and there was the noise of something caught in my spokes.  I have no idea what happened--I thought at the time I had gotten a branch stuck in my spokes.  I realized this was a critical situation that needed to be fixed, so I pulled over to check the problem.  As it turns out, my speed sensor had gotten into my spokes and gotten knocked off.  The wire that used to go up the arm of the speed sensor was still there and getting whapped around by the spokes.  After fixing this, I waited for a break in the stream of competitors and turned around to go back for my water bottle.  (Note that I didn't entirely do this just to avoid a littering penalty--there was no bottle exchange on the course, so if I didn't have this bottle, I knew I would be in trouble.)  The rest of the ride was uneventful.  I didn't feel like I pushed too hard and I got in another couple of Hammer Gels.

For some reason, I was a little obsessed with beating one of the girls on our PacGrove team who had done that race in 2:51.  This was a good 8 minutes faster than my PR, but I was hoping that my improvements on the swim and my experience having really good runs on my last 2 races would allow me a chance.  My goal was to start the run at 2:00, giving me 51 minutes to complete the 10K, well within my capabilities if I pushed.  I was amazed to check my watch and bike in and find that I'd just done a PR on the bike too!  I started the run at 1:50, giving me a full hour so I could take it easy on the run and easily beat Jen.  I was feeling confident and as coach rode up a quarter mile into my run, I told him my plan and how happy I was I could take it easy on the run.  He also told me that John was only a quarter mile in front of me, so I thought I had a chance of beating him, even though I knew he was faster on the run.  Then I finished my first mile in 8:38, which was close to my race pace and would have given me a finishing time of 53:38 (not that I could do such calculations in my head at the time, but I knew that pace would meet my goal pretty easily).  I took it a little slower the next mile, figuring I would save up for the last couple of miles.  I did this mile in 9:39.  Slower, yes, but I figured that was alright cause I would pick it up at the end. 

Then, disaster struck.  All the sudden, I became really hot and really tired.  Not only tired in that my legs didn't want to keep moving and were even developing cramps, but tired in that all I could think about was literally laying down in the grass and taking a nap.  (I should note that I didn't sleep AT ALL the night before and didn't sleep very well the night before either.)   After this, I was done.  I couldn't get myself back in the mental state to push through and make it happen.  I filled my hat with ice at the second aid station, but that actually seemed to hurt me and I slowed down more.  Eventually around mile 2.5, I started to walk.  I was getting some cramps around the bottom of my ribs, but I don't know if I was REALLY getting cramps or if I was just trying to find any reason I could to allow myself to walk.  For the next few miles, I did a run/walk (or perhaps a walk/run) and finished those miles in 11:06, 12:56, and 12:48.  Somewhere along there, coach rode up right in the middle of a walk and asked what was going on.  Only later did I find out he then rode up to everyone else and told them I was cramping and that they had a chance to beat me. :P

When I hit the mile 5 marker, I knew I had 14 minutes left in order to beat my PR and I knew at my current pace, that was going to be really close, so I knew I had to pick it up.  I ran that whole mile, finishing it in 10:09.  I think this picture is from that final mile and despite my thumbs up, I was NOT feeling good here.  I figured I had 4 more minutes to finish the last 0.2 miles, which was well within my capability.  Unfortunately as I saw 6.2 tick by on my GPS, I saw the finish and realized I was still quite a ways off, so I had to really push to try to make my PR and got my heartrate up to 92%.  I crossed the line in 2:59:11, which did give me a PR, but only by 18 seconds.  Not the 9 minutes I was hoping for nor the 15 minutes I thought I could do at the start of the run, but a PR nonetheless.

I knew my mom and Narda were around somewhere, so I thought about looking for them, but at this point I felt so bad that I found the nearest shaded area, sat down, and didn't move for the next 45 minutes.  Several times sitting there, I poured water on my head to cool down.  I really wanted some of the sports drink they were giving away, but couldn't get up to get any.  I thought about begging someone to bring me some, but in the end, I just sat there.

Eventually I got up, got some more water and sports drink and wandered over to the food tent where they had the most amazing spectacle I'd ever seen.  HUNDREDS, if not THOUSANDS of boxes of Papa John's Pizzas!!  People were walking around carrying full boxes and there seemed to be a never-ending supply!  I grabbed some pizza, then thought an iced coffee sounded great in lieu of my normal chocolate milk.  On my way there, I sat in some shade to finish my pizza and ended up sitting next to Briggs from Breakaway Training, who is a friend of Katie's she told me to be on the lookout for.  I talked with him for a while, got my ice coffee, and then FINALLY found my mom.

Eventually everyone finished.  We did our normal run the last person in, then got in the street and took our own team finishing photo:

Overall, a great race.  I actually really liked the course, and though I felt disappointed I had missed my goal time by so much, I was still really happy I had set 3 new PRs on the course.

(Okay--that entry took went pretty quick, but still took well over an hour and ended up being much longer than I'd hoped.  If you're reading this message, then I haven't yet gone back to edit this to make it shorter, so you just got stuck reading the obscenely long version.)

Allow me to take a break from my normal blogging activities (such as finishing my Nation's Tri race report) to say that today is the first day of fall!


I love fall!  Here are some of the reasons why:

• The weather starts to cool down, which allows me to start wearing my cooler weather clothes.
• The cooler weather also allows me to start sleeping more comfortably again.
• Running at Torrey Pines in the cool morning with Coach Ginger (Mentor Ginger at the time I think) was where I first learned to love to run.  I'm looking forward to that again!
  
• It's soup eating season again!
• It's chili eating season again!
• It's tea drinking season again!
  
• I get to use the hot tub without thinking that it's too hot out to be doing so.
  
• I love the smell of the air as the seasons change.
  
• I love the holidays!  (Strangely Halloween even though I used to absolutely hate it.)
  
• I love the smells that come out around this season like cinnamon or pumpkin spice.
  
• Everyone has drinks like pumpkin spice and mint (two different drinks--not a "pumpkin spice mint" drink).
  
• I love the colors of the leaves (even if we don't get to see them as much out here--at least I can decorate with them)
• I get to watch football again!
• I get to make my yummy warm appetizers for watching football games!
• I can make my warm breakfasts like steel cut oats cooked overnight in the crock pot.
  
• The rain comes back to San Diego, so I get to sleep in on the occasional rainy Saturday morning.
  
• It's great weather for cuddling on the couch (ugh--I really miss that!)
• Probably many more reasons that I'll remember later (feel free to reply with your own!).
  

To celebrate, I had a mug of blueberry green tea with my breakfast this morning. :)

And now (soon) back to your regularly scheduled blog....

Instead of trying to post a really long entry about my experience in DC for the Nation's Tri, I'm gonna split it into a bunch of smaller stories.

As (almost) always, I waited until the morning of my flight to do my packing.  Of course, that's the reason why I picked an afternoon flight--so I wouldn't be rushed to pack quickly in the morning.  Despite the somewhat scary date (September 11th), the flight went great and John even brought a nice warm cookie back from first class for me. (YUM!!)  Some people recommended "Super Shuttle" to me, but fortunately John was familiar with them and had arranged for a car service once we arrived.  Iris wasn't so fortunate and spent an hour and a half on the "Super Shuttle" the day before.  We had our share "fun" with our driver too though.  Despite the fact that he kept using English words, he had absolutely no grasp of the language.  I asked him three times in different ways "How long will it take to get to the hotel?" and never did get an answer out of him.  Once we got to downtown DC, a bunch of streets were closed for resurfacing and the guy couldn't figure out how to navigate.  In the end, he followed a paving truck onto a street where the top had been removed AND THEN STOPPED FOR THE STOPLIGHT!  So we're sitting there somewhere that we clearly shouldn't have been and 2 huge dump trucks are waiting for him to get out of the way and he just stopped.  All 3 of the other adults in the car start screaming at him to go, but he won't.  To recap, the street is BLOCKED, so by running this red light, he's in absolutely no danger of getting in an accident (well--unless some other driver who is as easily confused comes plowing through the cones).  We finally get through the light and the driver starts babbling about how he couldn't run the light because he can't get in trouble with the police again.  I didn't even try to get him to elaborate on that.  We did make it to the hotel safely, though I'm not sure if John tipped the guy after all this insanity.

I met up with everyone else already there (Iris, Coach, and John C.) and grabbed a quick meal at the hotel bar.  Iris told us that she and Sarah were doing a midnight bike ride around DC.  This sounded quite foolish to me, but after I thought about it for a while, I realized this sounded like an incredible adventure that I just had to go on.  My instincts were correct--the bike ride was incredible!!  There was almost no traffic, so we rode in the middle of the street by all the national landmarks.  Everything of interest was nicely lit and it was just amazing to see everything in person that I've only seen in the movies.  One of the first things we did was ride to the Capitol:


I really wish I had gotten a picture of the makeshift camera stand.  Iris and I leaned our bikes into each other, then I carefully perched my camera on one of the seats and used the camera's timer.  Right outside the lawn is the Capitol Reflection Pool and as I we rode past that, I made many comments about how that would be a great place to get a picture of me skinny dipping.  I had heard stories about such activities at PacGrove with the rest of the team already and was jealous that I missed out yet again.  We decided that although there wasn't a great deal of visible security, I should probably wait until after the race in case I end up in jail for it.  As it turned out, I was the last person in town, so after my mom left and I was ready to get freaky, there was no one left to take a picture.  I certainly didn't want to hang around forever trying to get a shot setup by myself with the auto-timer.

After this, we rode on to the Washington Monument.  Since we were there on September 11th, the circle of flags surrounding the monument were all at half mast.  There was a nice steady wind, so the flags were blowing nicely:


We rode up to the base of the monument and spent a lot of time there.  As we stood there quietly listening to the flapping of the flags, it began to gently rain on us.  I knew static pictures couldn't capture the feeling of this place, so I shot some video:


We rode around a little longer, then returned to the hotel after 1 in the morning.  Overall, this was a great first day of the trip!

One of the things that everyone kept mentioning about the Nation's Tri is how gross swimming in the Potomac River.  For the swim, they set up docks for us to get in and out of the water.  Those quickly started collecting all the flotsam and jetsam in the river, so by the time we got there, we found this:

Okay--it looks bad, although truthfully, once we got in the water, it was fine.  Visibility was bad, but not the worst I've been in.  And I was again reminded of how much I like swimming in fresh water.  I even had my swim PR on this swim, even though I once again went off course and stopped a couple of times.  But more on that in my full race report later....

I'm back in San Diego!!  I had a great time in DC and all--it was a fantastic town with lots to see and do, but by the end, I was done with the sightseeing and walking around.  I can't even tell you how great it was to see the Laguna Mountains on the flight back.  YAY!!!

I've really been going overboard on all my activities lately.  I have no downtime at all.  Sure, there are times that I'm not working or working out, but I end up filling that time so full with mentoring or socializating that I just don't have enough time to sleep, much less work on my house or even just kick back to relax, read, answer emails, or even pay my bills.  Okay, well I do pay my bills and reply to email, but that time comes out of what would normally be my work time, which means my billable time has been less than I'd like (and less than my boss would like) lately.

I've known about this problem for a while and kept thinking it would resolve itself once the PG/NT season is over, but now that the final event is staring me in the face, I'm finally realizing that it just won't.  Somehow I've managed to overcommit myself.  This weekend I've got Nation's tri.  In 2 weeks, Lighthouse Century, the week after, Longhorn half and 2 weeks after that is Pumpkinman.  Those races alone aren't that big of a problem, but for final prep on Saturday, Laurie came to talk to us about the Lavaman season.  She mentioned there that kickoff for Lavaman is November 8th.  That means that 2 weeks after Pumpkinman, I'm back to the insanity that is mentoring (or at least, mentoring the way I always end up doing it).

This all seems like too much.  I really feel like I should cut back on my races and spend at least a little of the remaining summer doing some other things that need to be done.  I'd really like to get some things done around the house so it's more presentable and comfortable.  I'd really like to get some training in with katie b and the Barney Butter team. 

There are even a couple of events that I'm not all that excited about that I'd almost like to bail out of.  But I feel like it's not about the event and more about how I've made commitments to go to these events with other people.  I mean, I think these events would be fun and all, but I also feel like I need some time to myself to do things other than TNT events.  (Don't worry Team Barney Butter--I'm not thinking of bailing out on Longhorn--that's the one race that I've actually been excited enough about to make all the preparations.  The other two I haven't cared enough about to make hotel or travel plans yet.)

So what's the point of this entry?  I don't have one.  I may drop out of a couple of races.  I may not.  Maybe I'll just not do any training for the ones I am signed up for and use the time for other things.  I don't know.  Just putting this all out there.

Am I competitive?  Good question.  I don't actually know how to answer that.

Last night we had our final track practice--a 1 mile time trial.  I have mixed emotions about time trials.  I like pushing myself hard to see what I can do, but I'm also scared to find out what my limits are.  I think I'm also pretty scared of finding out that at my very best, I'm not as good as other people out there.  (That should be obvious given that I'm not in the Olympics or anything, but still...)

As always, I was pretty nervous about it.  When even thinking about a time trial, I feel a rush of adrenaline course through my body.  I let that happen once as I was driving to the track, but then tried to relax and save myself for the run.  Although I thought I was able to stay calm, I think I was still really stressed.  I felt tired and had a headache.  During my warmup, I felt like I was gonna puke from lunch (maybe I shouldn't have drank the extra hot sauce).  (Sidenote--is that correct grammar?  "shouldn't have dranken"?  "shouldn't have drunken"?  Mark--help me out here.)

But far too soon, the gun went off and it was time to run.  If I remember correctly, I kept up with Neil for the first full lap then lost him half way through the second.  Around then is where I started having this debate about myself about how competitive I am.  Do I want to push harder to stay up with Neil?  What if I can't?  What if I try to keep pace with him and finally hit that wall where it's simply not possible for me to continue?  What does that even look like?  I've never pushed that hard before, so I don't know what it is.  I must have this subconscious vision of my body totally giving out--me puking and crashing to the ground while everyone else gathers around in a circle laughing and saying "YOU SUCK!".  I have no idea what would actually happen.  I mean--intellectually I know that people are busy doing their own personal bests and no one will stop to say that I suck.  True--I can still justify my fears by worrying that they'll think it, but I'm guessing they won't even do that.  Physically I don't know what would really happen to stop me.  I just have never tried that hard before to see what would happen.  I always stop myself mentally first.  I've certainly pushed myself beyond where I thought I could (Carlsbad Half and IB Triathlon are the races where I pushed through some mental barriers), but I've never pushed hard enough to hit the point where I simply could not continue.

(Oh--actually now I take that back--I did once--Tucson Century ride I push so hard (and drank so little) that I got massive cramps to the point where I couldn't stand while riding my bike at all.  Hmmm...  I'll have to think about this one more--certainly nothing critically bad happened to me because of this.  Maybe I can use it as future motivation.)

Anyway--back to the TT.  Neil kept quite a ways ahead of me.  I just tried to hold my pace and was worried about blowing up too early.  I heard Emily breathing down my neck the last lap and she finally passed me with probably 150 meters to go.  I tried to get motivated to push harder, but somehow I just didn't have it last night.  I still finished in 6:29, which was 1 second faster than my projected time and 18 seconds faster than at the beginning of the season.  It does fall short of my PR of 6:15 though.  Neil finished in 6:01 (WOW!!!!!) and Emily beat me by just a little with a 6:27.

Then this morning I was planning on an ocean swim.  Liz called me shortly after I woke up and told me she wasn't coming.  This was a perfect excuse for me to skip, especially since I didn't get as much sleep as I had wanted, but John told me there were a lot of people coming and that he needed my help.  On the drive there, I remember thinking "I hope it's not just me and John cause I don't think I can keep up with him."  Well--sure enough--I got there and it was just the two of us.  I've been doing a lot of swimming lately and I feel like I've improved, but I spend 99% of my time swimming with people much slower than I am, so I don't really know how fast I am now.

So again, I had to make the decision--do I try to keep up with John or do I let him go and take it easy?  I really didn't want to push it, again in part because I'm scared to fail and see how much faster John is, but I did.  I stayed next to him at first and eventually dropped behind him to draft.  We made it to the quarter mile in 7:42.  After chatting for a couple of minutes, we continued on to the half, making that leg of the journey in 6:53.  (I swear it's shorter to go from the quarter to the half than it is to go from shore to the quarter!)  We hung out and chatted for right at 4 minutes at the half, deciding to come all the way back to shore without stopping.  Once again I didn't feel like pushing it, so now I let John go on ahead.  I kept a pretty good pace and made the half mile back in 13:17, even though I kept getting way off course.  I think my right shoulder was getting tired, cause I kept pulling to the right really bad.  Now, several hours later, I can really feel the workout in my shoulders!  My total time, including just under 6 minutes of stops was 33:44.  I'm actually very happy about that!  My best Olympic distance swim time was 33:37.  This was longer than race distance and I came very close to the same time, even with 6 minutes of stopping and without pushing it as much as I could have.  I did have to push a little bit on the swim though and ended with a side ache.

So am I competitive?  I just don't know.  There are times where I push myself.  Somehow Greg and I had that a lot last year.  For some reason lately I've just been really scared to find out how much I can do, so I feel like I've lost that competitive edge.  I'd like to get it back.  I think.  At least, I'd like to lose my mental blocks and let myself do the best I can whether it's because I'm competing against myself or just on my own.  Guess I'll keep working on that...