The quest for a decent swim is, apparently , not over. Here you see my brother, on the right, and I at the start of Xterra Miami. I look happy but my stomach is in knots. This would not be a good day.
Once AGAIN I am the last person out of the water. I don't know what I have to do to solve this problem. The swim was not technically difficult. I just couldn't get a good rhythm going. My breathing wouldn't work properly and my stomach bothered me for most of the 1000 meter swim. I started in the back, as is my usual practice, and soon found myself at the back of the pack and losing ground. I couldn't get a breathing rhythm going and had to resort to breast stroke after 100 meters. I was swimming just behind a guy in a red swim cap who was doing back stroke. I told myself that I would pass him if I could.
I knew I wasn't really in shape for this triathlon. My goal was only to finish in one piece. The training leading up to Xterra Miami hadn't gone well. Although my shoulder had mostly recovered by January from the surgery to repair the collarbone that I snapped while training for Xterra Nationals last September, it had taken a while before I could really stroke anywhere near normally while swimming. In spite of that, I had worked my way up to a 1600 yard swim which was well over the advertised distance of 1200 meters for the swim at Miami. I'd also worked on my stroke mechanics and felt like I'd made some significant improvements. Overall, I was fairly confident for the swim.
The bike was another story altogether. After my shoulder was mostly healed I had started riding my bike back in December. I stayed off the trails for the most part, riding almost exclusively on the streets. I was a little bit nervous about hitting the trails after the very long and painful rehab from the collarbone fracture and the subsequent surgery to secure the separated ends of my clavicle with a 4 inch titanium plate and six inch-long screws. I got into the habit of riding long on Sundays, on the roads and paved paths with a group of my running buddies. I reasoned that Miami couldn't be that technically challenging since the event was taking place just inside the intracoastal waterway in North Miami Beach. I thought the bike course would be mostly flat and straight. That thought turned out to be seriously in error.
The problems with the bike ride started long before I got to Miami. I started to prepare the bike for the plane on the Wednesday night before our Friday morning flight. Fifty dollars as checked baggage on Southwest was way better than what Fed Ex would charge to ship the bike. Besides, I didn't have any place to which I could send the bike other than maybe the hotel. The wheels came off just fine. Ditto the handlebars. The seat was another matter entirely. The seat post was frozen to the frame tube. I tried everything I knew. Not only would it not come off, it wouldn't budge even a little bit. I ended up taking the frame to a bike shop on Thursday to see if they could get it off. No luck. The seat post was frozen to the frame tube so tightly, even the bike mechanic couldn't get it off without resorting to extraordinary measures. I wasn't willing to risk major damage to my frame the day before leaving for my first triathlon of the season. I ended up just removing the seat from the seat post, hoping that I could get it back on in exactly the same position when I put the bike back together in Miami. Then I crammed the frame into the largest box that the bike shop had. With the seat tube still in the frame it wasn't a perfect fit and, since this was the first time I had packed a bike for shipment, I worried that something wouldn't survive the trip.
As soon as the doctor gave me the thumbs up to start running again, sometime around Thanksgiving of last year, I began to claw my way back to running fitness. My first run was two miles. I slowly but surely worked my way up to six miles with a run on the trails along the Lilloet River near Whistler in British Columbia. On the way back to Seattle I stopped in Bellingham to get a new pair of running shoes. The store didn't have my size in the Asics Nimbus that I usually wear so I settled on a pair of Saucony shoes and continued my training. Within a couple of weeks I developed Achilles Tendonitis in my right leg and running more than a mile or two became nearly impossible. All I could do was watch my running fitness slowly wither away while I tried to rehab my stubborn right achilles tendon.
The trip to Miami was uneventful. My brother, Scott, who had come down on the train the day before from Washington, DC, picked us up at the Fort Lauderdale airport. The bike made the trip without any damage but when my brother and I tried to put it back together on Friday, we couldn't get the seat adjusted just right. Then we headed for the race venue right away to get in a practice ride.
We arrive at the race venue on Friday night with enough time to get in a 15 minute ride before they close the park. We head off into the woods and turn right where the guy at the bike shop in the park tells us to and start riding. Holy crap!!! The trail is one very difficult obstacle after another with steep moguls and sharp 180 degree turns every 10 or 15 feet. I'm trying to keep up with my brother, an expert mountain biker, and having a tough time. First, I stall on one steep obstacle and fall, hard, onto the coral rock strewn trail on the downhill side. Then a few minutes later I fall, nearly as hard, on another very technical part of the trail. I'm now suddenly questioning my ability to even enter the race if this is what the bike ride is going to look like. A few more minutes on this trail and I've had enough. I'm now suddenly VERY nervous about the race on Sunday. We exit the trail and then discover that we had gone onto the wrong trail. The trail we had ridden on was an EXPERT trail that, although we didn't know it at the time, was not going to be part of the race course. The start of the intermediate trail that we should have ridden was 10 feet before the trail we had ridden. I spent the rest of the evening feeling very apprehensive about the race.
Things didn't get much better the next day. After a great night's sleep in a very quiet hotel room we headed over to the venue around 10AM the next day. We went on a longer bike ride that seemed almost as difficult as the night before even though we were on the right trail this time. I came off a berm too fast and too wide on a 180 degree turn and collided violently with a tree. My right shin was banged up so much that my lower right leg would be swollen the next day. There were a few other, less calamitous unplanned dismounts during our 45 minute jaunt into the woods. All this time, the seat is driving me nuts. It seemed to be angled downwards at the nose causing my arms to lean into the bars too hard making it more difficult to control the front wheel. We tried to adjust the damn thing several times but couldn't seem to get it just right. We gave up and I figured I'd just have to make the best of it. After this practice ride I didn't feel any better about the next day.
We checked out the first of the three water crossings on the run course. This one would be too deep to walk across and promised to make for an interesting start to the run course. Then we hung out for a little while after registering for the race and finding out that besides my brother and I, there would be one other competitor in the 55-59 age group. There hadn't been a single entrant in the 55-59 age group in either of the previous years races in Miami. Scott and I were hoping for the same situation this year guaranteeing Scott the seventy- five first place points (barring a serious mechanical failure) and me, assuming I survived the bike course intact, the sixty eight second place points. Oh well, third place was still a podium finish. How bad could it be?
Scott and his wife, Margaret, had come down with a friend, Cari, from DC. Cari was a Captain in the AirForce who was headed to the Air Force Academy to teach Physical Education to the cadets. After a few hours on the nearby Atlantic Ocean beach, The five of us tried to get into the nearby Olive Garden around 5:30PM so I could get my usual pre-race meal of spaghetti. The wait was forty-five minutes so we found another italian restaurant nearby and had a pleasant, if somewhat expensive, dinner and headed back to Scott's hotel to drop the three of them off before Brigitte and I headed for our hotel.
Just as we get out of the car, Cari says to Scott, "Scott, where's your seat?" Sure enough Scott's quick release seat post, with his saddle attached, had been stolen sometime between the time we had left the race venue and the time we had finished dinner. So we killed an hour looking, in vain as it turned out, for an open bike shop until Scott finally got a hold of the owner of the bike shop at the park where the race was being run and was assured that a seat post and saddle that would fit Scott's bike could be lent to Scott the next day. If a seat post of the proper size wasn't available, Scott could always rent a bike that, although not as good as the brand new Niner that he had, would work just fine for the race.
We finally got back to our hotel still early enough to be in bed by 9:30. I set the alarm for five o'clock the next morning and tried desperately, although futilely, not to worry about the race the next day. All I could think about was the hard time I had had on the bike course. What had happened to all my mountain biking skills? I had ridden a tough course in Virginia without too much trouble last August and now, it seemed, I couldn't ride ten feet without running into a tree or failing to negotiate even fairly easy turns. I tossed and turned all night, unable to get much sleep even though the hotel room was completely quiet.
Sunday came too early. I reluctantly tumbled out of bed, groggy from lack of sleep. I tried to eat my breakfast of a plain bagel but only got half of it down accompanied by 12 ounces of Gatorade. I drank the Gatorade on purpose to replace any electrolytes I might have lost during the hot, humid practice ride on the previous day. Now, I think, that was a mistake. I also didn't eat enough and by the time Brigitte and I had picked up Scott and Cari and arrived at the race venue, only a mile or so from Scott's hotel, my stomach was already churning from nerves and the acidic Gatorade.
I got a good spot in transition since we were one of the first competitors to arrive, having to wait a few minutes for the park to open at just after 6:00AM. The race would start at 8:00AM. After nervously chatting with other competitors I set up my transition after it finally got light enough to see. The good news was that they had real bathrooms in a pavilion right next to transition. What a bonus! I had a successful, ummm, experience there and felt pretty good as I got body marked and went for a warm up run about thirty minutes before the race started. Then I got into the surprisingly chilly (advertised at 74 degrees) water and did a warm up swim. I did not do a warm up ride although I had told myself that I would, just to make sure the bike was working properly before the race.
Another quick trip to the bathroom followed the warm up swim and I got back to the fine white sand beach on an inlet of Biscayne Bay just in time to catch the pre-race briefing. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and we were off!
I put my head down and started to swim hard. The swim course was 250 meters along and to the outside of the buoy line that marked the deepest part of the swimming area. Don't ask me what the "No Swimming" sign was for, there were plenty of people in the water when I ran across the beach, almost 5 hours later, at the finsh. Then we were supposed to do a U-turn and swim back on the inside of the buoy line. Then we'd turn around at the beach and repeat for a total of 1000 meters. The race was advertised as 1200 meters, but you never know what you're going to get with Xterra races. I looked up and saw that I had made up some time on red cap guy.
The outbound leg of the swim was harder than the inbound leg and I just couldn't get a rhythm going. I had trouble with my breathing and the nausea in my stomach, which I think came from all the Gatorade on a relatively empty stomach combined with all the pre-race nerves, didn't help. The wind had picked up just before race time and the chop was coming into my right side which is where I breathe. I swallowed some of the salt water and that didn't help to calm my stomach. Add to all this that all I could think of was after this unpleasant swim I'd have to ride that nasty bike course. I resolved then and there that I would quit Xterra triathlons for good.
I finally made it to the first turn around on the swim course. Now the chop on the water was coming at me from the left. I found that I could swim much better now. Breathing was easier and I could ignore the upset stomach long enough to swim hard. I passed red cap guy and exited the water after the first swim lap in second to last place feeling queasy with a bunch of air in my stomach. Nothing to do but turn around and head out for swim lap two.
Swim lap two didn't go much better than swim lap one. Red cap guy passed me again on the outbound leg. I struggled to the turnaround and went after red cap guy again. I started to pass him and he bashed me in the head and displaced my goggles. I had to stop and adjust them to keep the salt water out of my eyes. It was a bit of a demoralizing setback. I tried to catch him again but he left the water just ahead of me. Great. Last out of the water, but at least I'm in contact with the pack.
I jogged the 50 yards or so to the transition and gave the volunteer my number as I headed for my bike. I wasn't happy but I figured I 'd do the best I could on the bike. I actually beat red cap guy out of transition although I didn't find out that fact until he passed me on the road leading to the bike trail in the woods. OK. I'm now DFL in the race and I haven't even hit the bike trail yet. Yeah, this is fun.
Things got worse.
I hit the trail and rode as fast as I could. I made it about a half mile and crashed, hard, into a tree. No damage but it frustrated me a lot. The seat just wasn't right and I didn't feel in control at all. I rode another 1/2 mile or so and stopped to adjust the seat. It took about five minutes but I judged that it would be worth it since I had, I thought, more than 15 more miles to ride. The trail was just unforgiving. There was no let up. It was one obstacle after another. The course was mostly flat (meaning no long up or down hills) but that meant that you had to peddle constantly to maintain some momentum to carry you over the ever present roots and up and over all the never ending whoops and 180 degree hairpin bends in the trail. One 1/2 mile long section was covered in rounded coral rocks that was like riding on marbles. More than once I stalled on a 180 turn at the top of a hillock and fell fairly hard. No external damage but each one took a toll in energy and enthusiasm. Two other tree collisions resulted in no real damage but threw my chain off the front sprocket each time. I was four miles into the bike course and my arms were already nearly exhausted from negotiating the extremely technical trail.
The bike course was a two loop affair. It was supposed to be 18 miles but, like the swim course, turned out be shorter. I was thinking I had 5 more miles to go on the first loop and then another 9 miles for the second loop. I stopped and adjusted the seat again. As I leaned over the bike to work on the seat sweat was streaming off my head onto my sunglasses and on to the ground. I realized that I would need to stop frequently along the way to hydrate since the course didn't provide much opportunity to take a hand off the bars and get a drink from my waistpack. At least I had my gel flask with me this time. The seat was a little better after the second adjustment but I left my sunglasses on the ground when I started riding again. I realized it too late to go back and get them. Miraculously, the trail zig zagged and looped back on itself enough that I was able to stop a little further on and retrieve them without walking too much. I figured I needed to stop, hydrate and take a pull from the gel flask anyway.
By now, I'm really feeling my lack of endurance training. I'd done some short brick workouts but my wonky achilles tendon had prevented me from doing any long workouts over 3 hours. My longest training workout had been a 27 mile bike ride with a good break after 12 miles, on pavement, about 3 weeks before the race. It wasn't nearly enough and it showed. And to add to my misery, I was starting to get lapped by the front of the field. Long straight sections were nowhere to be found so I had to stop frequently and let faster riders pass. I found myself thinking about DNF'ing after the first lap of the bike course. My arms were absolutely killing me and I couldn't face the prospect of doing this, for me anyway, miserably difficult bike course again.
Fortunately the last 2 miles of the bike course were somewhat easier. I got to the turnoff for the second loop and the course marshall waved me towards the transition. I had to tell him that I was finishing my first loop and I soldiered on, all alone, to the start of my second loop.
Right after I started the second lap my bike handling skills miraculously returned. I re-figured out how to maneuver the bike through the twisty terrain. Between riding better and having some knowledge of what was coming up, I had a much better second lap of the bike course. At one point though, I got a little cocky, took a turn a little too sharp and caught a pedal on a boulder. Bam! The bike went down and I went off the bike. Fortunately the ground there was flat and I somehow managed to stay on my feet after coming off the bike. A little while later as I coasted down a steep ramp my back wheel made funny noises so I stopped to investigate. I thought I had thrown a chain so I lifted the back end and turned the pedals by hand. The back wheel promptly fell off the bike. Somewhere I had hit something (I hit a lot of things) that had knocked the quick release loose on the rear axle. Yikes, that could have been ugly.
I rode nearly the entire 2nd lap of the bike course. There were just a couple of obstacles that were beyond my skills but I walked a few other obstacles, not because I didn't have the skill to ride them, but because I didn't have the strength. I was exhausted and it was getting hotter and more humid all the time. The temperature was into the 80's (it was 77 at 6AM) and the humidity was way up there too. With the easy two miles of the bike course to go I was absolutely desperate to get off the bike. I had no idea where I would find the strength to do the 10K run but I didn't care. I just wanted off the bike.
As I got near the transition area, on the last short section of trail through the woods, I spooked an alligator. He took off running the other way. Good thing he didn't know I didn't have the energy to run away from him.
"What the hell was I thinking!?", I asked my brother when I hit the transition area. I was battered, bruised and completely out of energy. My arms felt like over-cooked spaghetti. But I was now determined to finish this damn race. I got my bike stuff off, put my run stuff on and headed out towards the first of three water crossings on the run course. I was a little apprehensive about the concept of a water crossing in the middle of a run. This meant that in the middle of the South Florida heat and humidity my shoes, shorts and shirt would not dry out. As it turned out things would be a little worse than that.
The first water crossing was about 15 yards across and 10 feet deep. I realized before I got to it that I couldn't submerge my Garmin 301 in the water so I put the Garmin under my hat and told myself to keep my head out of the water. Once you're in the water with running shoes on you can't swim. It just takes too much energy. What does work is water running. I had to keep my head dry anyway so I just floated upright (this is greatly aided by heavy shoes on your feet) in the water and "ran" across the water. The big surprise was on the other side of the road at the end of the water crossing. There was an open field that had been stripped of vegetation by bulldozers in preparation for some construction. The first ten yards of this field were ankle deep, shoe-sucking mud. Great. Now I'm exhausted, although the water crossing did refresh me a bit from the heat, and I have to try to run with feet that are weighted down by an inch thick coating of heavy mud. Thankfully, the mud sloughed off after a few hundred yards although I had to stop and empty some mud that had gotten inside my right shoe.
My back started to go south on me on the bike. The lower right side tightened up and got painful during the last couple of miles on the bike. On the run, it got worse. I found myself unable to run more than a few hundred yards before having to walk and let the spasm in my lower right back subside. This continued for the rest of the run. As I ran my feet made a clomp, squish, clomp, squish noise that to my heat and exhaustion addled brain sounded strangely like someone shaking a box of Tic Tacs. The rest of the run was pretty uneventful. After a mile or so I came to the long water crossing. It was fifty yards across with a good current. We were provided with a rope to pull across so I used the same technique as the first water crossing. I "ran" with my feet and pulled myself along the rope while my Garmin rested high and dry on my head under my hat. The only problem was that my half empty, nicely cold bottle of Gatorade floated out of my water bottle belt. I wasn't happy about this but figured that there'd be three more aid stations on the course so I'd survive.
Relentless forward motion was my mantra. A couple of volunteers on mountain bikes manned the aid stations and made sure I knew where to go. I just kept moving, running what I could and walking the rest. I finally came upon the final water crossing 500 yards from the finish. This one was only waist deep so I slogged through as fast as my tired legs would let me. Once I hit the beach I saw the entire field of contestants, who were waiting for the awards ceremony that was delayed by my late arrival, gathered at the other end of the beach hooting, hollering and cheering me on to the finish. The race director came out, along with my brother, and ran me in to the finish. Wow, that was a classy thing to do. Somehow, my back didn't bother me for the last three hundred yards of the race.
I finished in 4 hours and 54 minutes. Almost an hour slower than I had planned. I was about 30 minutes, including transition, on the swim for 1000 meters. The bike took me about 3 hours for approximately 15 miles and the run was about 1:24 for around 5 miles. I finished the race Dead Last. But I got third in my age group so I went home with hardware. It'll be our little secret that there were only 3 people in my age group. There were 9 DNF's, about 10% of the field.
The next day I didn't feel too bad. The worst problem was some VERY serious chafing from riding for 3 hours in sweat soaked bike shorts. My left shoulder, with the titanium reinforced clavicle is quite a bit more sore than usual but the pain is tolerable. My legs are stiff and sore and my half dozen or so abrasions are still a little tender but I'll survive. Now I start training for this season's Xterra Triathlon number two on June 6th.
Here's a few more pictures.
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These and a few other pictures from the trip are posted at:
http://good-times.webshots.com/album/570739821PIiWKm
Marc, aka The Terrible Triathlete
