Not sure what the complete stop around mile one was. This was a run 1 minute/walk 4 minutes run.
OK, pretty flat again I know.
The path rises as I near the finish so the HR climbs pretty steadily.
Here's the pace chart. I was running with a friend who's faster than I am at the moment so when we were running we were running fairly fast. The workout was run 2 minutes/walk three minutes. I fudged the first run interval so it's a little short.
OK, it was pretty flat. The elevation charts will look more interesting in future posts.
Here's the heart rate chart. You can tell we were running uphill at the end as the HR rises a little for each interval.
After struggling all summer with knee pain I finally got a good diagnosis about what turned out to be a cyst in my knee. Just when I was ready to bag the race, a doctor took an MRI in early September and told me that I had a cyst in my right knee. About that time the pain abated too. I told the Dr. I was doing this race so we tentatively scheduled surgery to remove the cyst for mid November. Once I knew I wasn’t aggravating some soft tissue injury by running I started training in earnest for the race in the first week of September.
Yeah, I know, 6 weeks is a *little* short of adequate time to train for a major triathlon but I may only get one shot at Xterra Worlds (plus I paid a non-refundable 375.00 entry fee) and I didn’t want to give up. Besides, I had been doing some MTBing and a lot of swimming so I wasn’t exactly starting from scratch.
I cobbled together a 6 or 7 week training plan and decided to go for it.
We had been planning this trip to Maui for over a year. My brother, who was also doing the race, and his wife offered to share their two bedroom time share condo on Maui with us so we had a great place to stay. We planned to stay at the host hotel for two nights, the night before and the night after the race, so the logistics would be easy on race morning.
We arrived on Maui the Monday before the race, which would be held the following Sunday. We played, gently so as not to injure ourselves, in the sun and surf for a couple of days and then it was time to go to work. We were planning to hit packet pickup as soon as it started at 9AM on Wednesday and we wanted to do our practice ride as soon as possible so our legs would have time to recover.
Wednesday morning dawned with a huge storm cloud over Haleakala, the volcano that dominated the southern end of Maui and loomed over the race start. We left our condo in Kaanapali, well north of Makena where the race would be held, under clear skies. By the time we got to the Makena Beach and Golf Resort it was cloudy and threatening rain. We got our bikes out of the car and rolled into the host hotel and down to the ballroom where Xterra Central was set up to welcome athletes from all over the world.
My number was 512. After shopping at the expo and spending way too much money on Xterra stuff, I put my number on my bike and got ready to do my practice ride. Just about this time, Haleakala decided to let loose with some moisture. A steady rain started to fall as we were getting ready to ride.
We changed our plan. We figured we’d do a practice swim first, since it didn’t matter if we got wet after the swim. So off to the beach we go. There were a couple of athletes finishing up their swim as we get in the ocean and swim into some 1-2 foot waves. I had a pretty good swim of about 800 meters. We basically swam out for 8-10 minutes, swam parallel to the beach for a few minutes and swam back. I had some trouble sighting as we headed back to the beach and ended up zig-zagging a bit. I hoped I’d do better on race day.
It was still raining steadily as we slogged out of the water and headed back up to the Expo. My bike was resting comfortably, sporting its 512 number plate and the brand new Kenda Small Block Eight tires that I had installed for the race.
There was quite a bit of discussion about tire choice for this race and I saw all kinds of tires on the bikes that had come from all over the world. I noticed a small knot of competitors gathered around my bike discussing my tire choice. I was too far away to hear what they were saying but I did notice that most of the athletes had more conventional MTB tires on their bikes. I noticed that some of the competitors were planning on racing on some pretty worn out tires.
I’ve always believed in running new or very nearly new tires for a major race. I wasn’t going to let $100.00 worth of tires come between me and a good race so I put brand new tires on my bike. The tread pattern was chosen because I knew that the bike course surface had a lot of loose dirt and gravel on it and the Kenda Small Block Eight had performed very well when I rode on it over the mostly gravel covered trails that I train on in Albuquerque. My tire choice would prove to be a good one on race day.
We waited a bit for the rain to stop and then decided to just go for it and ride in the rain. We were already wet from our swim. The bike practice course wasn’t actually on the bike course. The Xterra World Championships Bike Course is on private land and the landowner doesn’t open up the course until race day. So we were strictly forbidden to be on the bike course before race day. Instead, Xterra made a portion of the run course with similar terrain available for practice riding. The practice course was only about three miles and much of that was on some semi paved asphalt but it did give newcomers a sense of what to expect on the bike course.
The rain stopped and the sun came out briefly while we were riding then it started again in earnest after we got back to the host hotel. We hung out, tried to dry out which was impossible in the jungle-like heat and humidity and then decided to head back to Kaanapali. There was just one problem…
Since we were planning on going for a ride first, I had put the electronic key for our rental mini-van in the back pocket of my tri-top. Then we changed our minds and decided to swim first…with the key still in my tri-top and since I was going to race in my tri-top I was doing my practice swim in my tri-top too.
Long story short, I had to get the car towed back to the rental car place on the other side of the island and pick up another car since the electronic key was fried. At least they didn’t charge me for frying the key. Waiting for the tow truck killed two hours though, but overall, no harm, no foul.
We made a trip back to the host hotel on Thursday and Friday too. I did another short ride on the roads around the hotel just to keep the legs loose. I didn’t want to risk an injury by riding on the practice course up on the mountain.
By Friday I was little more nervous but not terrified. My plan was to make sure I was well rested on race day so I just took it easy and relaxed, soaking in the atmosphere of all the triathletes from 35 different countries some swimming, some running, a lot of them biking as we all prepared for the big day.
Saturday was a busy day. Brigitte was doing the trail 11k race that Xterra holds on the day before the World Championship race. The 11k race is done on the run course for the triathlon so Brigitte could give me a preview. I had run the same trail race three years earlier when we had come to Maui to watch my brother compete at Worlds so I was a little bit familiar with the course. But a fresh look at the course, especially with all the rain over the last few days couldn’t hurt
We also checked into the host hotel. I was really looking forward to staying at the Makena Beach and Golf Resort. The swim would start on the beach in front of the hotel and the transition would be on the hotel grounds. It would be nice to roll out of bed, walk my bike downstairs and be at the race.
After Brigitte’s race, where she got a 2nd in her age group, we just hung out at the hotel and relaxed. I spent the day drinking nothing but water and laying around by the pool. I was determined to be well rested for the race.
At 7PM the night before the World Championships Xterra celebrates its past champions with a gala dinner. We attended the dinner but like the rest of the athletes we drifted back to our hotel rooms as soon as the dinner was over. I double checked my gear for the next day and got a great night’s sleep, confident in my plan for the race the next day.
Transition opened at 7AM on Sunday. The race started at 9AM. I was up at 6:30 feeling well rested and only a little nervous.
I had decided to completely revamp my pre-race routine. All my years of running had left me ambivalent about getting a good warmup. Most of the running races I had done were long distance affairs and I had gotten into the habit of mostly saving my strength and doing little to no warmup. My previous six triathlons, with one exception, had not gone well, mostly due to nerves about the swim. But an experience on a training swim across Cochiti lake this past summer had convinced me that a big part of my problem on the swim was a lack of an adequate warmup. So today would be different.
I had been practicing with breakfasting on a banana smoothie for a month or two before the race. I bought some bananas before race day, got the deli at the hotel to sell me a cup of milk the day before which I stored in our room fridge and I brought a hand blender from home to mix it up with. It went down without a hitch as I got dressed and ready to leave.
On the way to the elevator with my bike I topped off my Gatorade-filled Camelbak and my Gatorade-filled insulated running bottle with ice then I headed for transition right at 7AM.
Met my brother downstairs and together we were among the first competitors into transition. The bike racks were numbered, five bikes to a section, well over 500 bikes in all. We racked our bikes and setup our transitions. Then it was off to body marking. Good thing we got there early. There was no line for body marking when I went to get 512 stamped on my shoulders and 55, my age group, on my calf. An hour later there were thirty or more guys lined up to get body marked. I got slathered in sunscreen by the Planet Sun sunscreen guy. Then I started my warmup.
I decided at the last minute that I would buy another tube so I would have two tubes with me on the bike ride. It may be overkill but I had heard too many stories about the kiawe thorns, nail-like dried out thorns that littered the mountainside of Haleakala volcano and were reputed to go right through one side of a tire and tube and out the other side. So my run warmup was back to my room for the 10 bucks that the guy from the local bike shop wanted for a 29 inch, pre-Slimed tube. I was hoping it would fit neatly into my saddle bag and it did. That was the last of my equipment worries.
Then I was off to the second part of my new pre-race ritual. I grabbed my bike and went for a ride. Good thing too. Somehow I had managed to screw up my chain as I was walking it down to transition. I fixed it and then rode for just a couple of minutes, making sure that when I returned the bike to the rack, that I left it in the gear I would need leaving transition during the race.
Finally it was time to head down to the beach and warm up for the swim. I got to the beach and started to get a little nervous. Plunging into the 80 degree ocean was more of a shock than I expected but it didn’t last too long. I got in a really good warmup swim, much more than I had ever done before, probably swimming a good 400 meters before getting out of the water. The race officially wanted all of the competitors out of the water by 8:30 so I was standing on the beach, out of the water in plenty of time.
One of the things I had decided to do, for a gag, was to wear an inflatable animal ring on the beach before the start. This turned out to be a great idea. A lot of the other competitors came up to me and laughed at the prop. It really helped to take the edge off the start.
The start was preceded by an elaborate Hawaiian traditional blessing. I think the blessing idea is great but this thing went on for almost half an hour. I made sure that I stayed loose while we waited for the cannon to go off, swinging my arms as much as possible. Just before the race started I took off the inflatable toy and got ready to swim.
3-2-1 Boom!!! And the race was on. My plan was to start in the back on the outside to avoid the scrum and just swim MY race. The new pre-race routine worked like a charm. I started swimming smoothly and strongly right from the first stroke. I caught a good draft from someone in front of me and just kept going.
Xterra swims are generally two lap triangular courses. They put two buoys out in the water and a third one near the beach where we exit the water. We swim to the first buoy, turn left, swim to the second buoy, turn left, then swim to shore. After the first lap we run the beach for 50 yards or so and dive into the water for lap two.
I actually had full confidence in my ability to do the swim. I had done a swim across Cochiti Lake and back, a distance of about 1.5 miles, twice over the summer. Twelve days before the race I’d swum 2000 yards in the pool in a decent time with no problems. The only question marks were how fast I’d be able to swim and how well I would handle the crowd.
I divided the swim up into six parts. Part one, get a good start and get to the first buoy. I felt great as I sighted perfectly and rounded the first buoy in a pack of other swimmers. I was nowhere near last this time. I sighted on the second buoy and just kept a good rhythm. Part two was getting around the second buoy. No problem. I felt like I was swimming slowly but I was determined to pace myself and just have a smooth swim. Part three was getting to the beach. I got a little bit inside of the approach buoy and had to make a slight course correction but I hit the beach feeling strong and started running for the flag where lap two would start. Brigitte told me that I had only taken 15 minutes for lap one. Yikes! I felt really good about that. I should note that the first swimmer was out of the water, after TWO laps, in 19:29, so as good as I felt about the swim I have a long way to go.
Thumbs up after the first swim lap!
I had debated getting a speed suit for the swim. There’s a bit of a tradeoff between saving time on the swim and taking time in transition to take the speed suit off. Had I been able to find one that was reasonably priced before we left for Hawaii I would have bought one, but all the reasonably priced ones were out of my size. They had one in my size at the expo for only 120.00 but I reasoned that I didn’t want to wear it for the first time at this race even if it had been cheaper.
My brother, Scott, with whom I have a friendly rivalry, has been doing Xterra triathlons for 6 or 7 years and is a much better MTBer than I am so I had no illusions of beating him in the race. I thought though that I might just have a chance against him in the swim although he was wearing a speed suit.
Just as I started to dive in the water for lap two I saw Scott diving in just ahead of me. Soon after that we were swimming side by side and I was holding my own stroke for stroke. Part four of the swim was to get to the first buoy on the second lap. I didn’t feel tired at all, but shortly after entering the water on lap two I got a cramp in my right foot. “This is a new one”, I said to myself as I tried to relax the foot without slowing down. The cramp subsided within a minute or two and I sighted back on the first buoy.
I went around the first buoy on lap two stroke for stroke with Scott and sighted on the second buoy. I was now confident that I was almost done with the swim and it would be my best swim ever. Part five of the swim ended as I rounded the second buoy, still stroke for stroke with my brother. Somewhere between the second buoy and the shore another swimmer got between us and I, unwilling to alter my game plan of pacing myself on the swim, let Scott get a bit ahead. Right about the same time I saw a sea turtle swimming below us, completely oblivious to the mayhem going on at the surface.
Scott and I left the water 17 seconds apart. Brigitte told me I had done the swim in 37 minutes. I was ecstatic. Officially it was 38:02 but that was still better than the 40 minutes that I had thought would be about my best.
I was disappointed when we got to transition. I felt like I had had a good swim and I didn’t expect to see so few bikes left in transition. It looked like only a handful of bikes on the racks. Oh well. It made finding my bike pretty easy. In hind sight, I was racing against the best Xterra triathletes in the world so I was probably expecting too much. I just looked at the results. As good as I thought my swim was, I only beat 16 people out of the water.
My transition went OK. It could have been a bit faster but I hadn’t organized my gear properly and consequently I left my Garmin in transition. Other than having difficulty getting my gloves on over my wet hands, that was my only problem with transition. The gloves probably cost me a minute which I would regret dearly at the end of the race.
My legs were dead as I started to ride. I told myself to just pace yourself and keep moving. I needed at least a 3:15 on the bike to make the run cutoff that had been established at 4 hours if I was going to finish. I knew it might be close.
The bike course starts out on the road in front of the hotel for about a half mile before it starts up the mountain. Then it’s pretty much a relentless climb of varying steepness for about 7 miles. I was able to ride the first three or four miles of the uphill but then it got too steep and I was, again, committed to conserve my energy so I just pushed the bike up hill. Every time we rounded a turn there was another bloody hill that was still too steep to ride. Occasionally there’d be a stretch where we could ride but those stretches were short. The top of the bike course was almost 1600 feet above the ocean where we started.
Finally after reaching the top of this section of the course we were able to ride a mile or two of rollers. I hammered the course as hard as I could on the downhills and tried to conserve my energy on the uphills. At the first aid station I was in front of a woman from Brazil who looked at her watch and said we had 1:40 to make the run cutoff. That spooked me. I knew the first aid station was only about a third of the way through the bike course and we had a long way to go.
After the rollers we came to the steepest part of the course. This was really brutal. The temperature was 87 degrees in full sun with no wind and no shade. The race takes place on the leeward side of the volcano. All the rain falls on the other side. The course was hot, dry and dusty and all I could do was keep trying to push my bike up each seemingly successively steeper hill after another. At one point I just stopped. There was no air and no shade and I just had to take a break before I could go on. The good news was all the bike pushing gave me an opportunity to drink plenty of Gatorade from my Camelbak.
Once in a while there’d be a short stretch that I could ride. It felt so good to be able to ride the bike and get a breeze even if only for a few seconds. As the bike course stretched on and on I began to have serious doubts about my ability to make the run cutoff. Surely it had already taken me longer than 1:40 since the first aid station? I reasoned that there was nothing to do but keep going as hard as I could and hope for the best.
After finally cresting the last of the interminable uphills I reached the highest point on the course and made the right turn at aid station number two. I paused briefly to get a good shot of gel and wash it down with some water. Then I passed 3 or 4 competitors and started down the section of the bike course known as “The Plunge” to the sound of one of the aid station volunteers yelling, “Check your brakes!”.
I touched my brakes for a second just to make sure they were OK and proceeded to ride this completely rock covered, steep and twisty section of the course just as fast as I could go. The only time I used the brakes other than lightly to maintain some semblance of control was when I couldn’t see around the next turn. I blasted by several slower riders trying to pick their way through the rocks with reckless abandon. I was determined to make the run cutoff if it was at all possible. After a mile and a quarter of hammering down the mountain I had lost 900 feet of elevation riding over a roughly rutted, rocky jeep road. After a sharp right turn I was riding a section of net downhill rollers and I cruised through enjoying the cooling breeze created by my speed and had a chance, albeit brief, to enjoy the view of the ocean far below me. Then I came around a turn and I couldn’t believe I was going to have to push up another ¼ mile long hill. “When is it going to end?” I wondered. I got up as much speed as I could and tried to ride up the hill as fast as possible. This was my only unplanned dismount of the ride as I stalled riding through a rocky rut and laid the bike down as I jumped off but stayed on my feet. After this long uphill it was almost all downhill to the transition and I rode just as hard as I could go. I skipped the third aid station because I still wasn’t sure I would make the run cutoff. The last few miles of the bike course share the mostly dirt road with the start of the run course and there was a steady stream of runners coming up the hill so I figured I might just have time to make the run.
After entering the road to the hotel I shifted into the big ring and motored over the last ½ mile of the bike course. As I entered transition Brigitte told me I had 15 minutes left to make the run. I had done it! I was just elated because I knew that no matter what happened on the run course I would finish the race. I wasn’t expecting a lot of trouble on the run but the race still had a couple of surprises for me.
Back from the bike.
I had a little trouble finding my rack spot when I got back since all the bikes were there but it only cost me a few seconds. I put my Garmin on, got into my running shoes, tossed off my helmet and my gloves, grabbed my water bottle belt and my race number and headed out on the run.
I was pretty much toast by now after riding the bike course as hard as I did. My legs were even deader than I’d thought they’d be. The plan was to walk the uphills and shuffle through the downhills as best I could. I was a little nervous here. My run “training” consisted almost entirely of three runs done as brick workouts after 20 mile plus bike rides in late September and early October. The first of those “runs” had been 30 minutes of run 1 minute/walk 4 minutes. The next one was an attempt to do the same run 1 minute/walk 4 minutes routine but go for an hour. I made it to 51 minutes before my right knee complained too loudly and I walked the rest of the way back to the car. The third run, the following week, lasted for an hour during which I covered just shy of 4 miles.
Headed out on the run.
After about two miles of mostly uphill, mostly walking I was running on a downhill and just starting to feel good that I might have a decent run when my right hamstring locked up on me. No warning. One step was fine, next step, no go. Crap! At first I thought I’d re-injured the hamstring and wasn’t sure I’d be able to keep going. I stopped, stretched and when it still wouldn’t relax I just started limping along the course. Eventually, the cramp, as it turned out to be, let up and I started my run downhill, walk uphill routine again. Shortly after that I got another cramp and limped along while drinking as much of the Gatorade that I had with me as I could. By three miles I was getting hamstring cramps with increasing frequency, first one leg than the other. I refilled my 20 oz bottle of Gatorade at the next aid station and emptied it before the one following that, about a mile later. I took a gel packet every mile, ate some potato chips at one aid station and took three salt tablets that another runner gave me. It didn’t help. The cramps kept on coming. By 5 miles I had taken in 4 gel packets and 80oz of Gatorade just on the run and the cramps were still coming. Clearly I had underestimated how much salt I would lose in the heat and humidity of Hawaii when my usual training and racing venue was the dry air of New Mexico.
The final blow came with about a mile to go. I was trying to run a section of beach when both hamstrings seized up at the same time. I was dead in my tracks. I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t straighten my legs. All I could do was plop down in the sand on my butt and massage my hamstrings. Then a wave came along, hit my legs and they felt better. That was the last cramp I would have. I walked most of the rest of the course stopping at the last aid station and one more time to get an annoying rock out of my shoe. I would really regret that last stop.
I finally picked my way over the lava field at the end of the final stretch of beach and climbed the hill up to the hotel grounds and started to run the last quarter mile to the finish. When I first saw the clock it read 6:00:40. Rats. I would not break six hours! Final time was 6:00:53. If I’d skipped any one of the aid station stops I would have broken 6 hours. When I started on the run I thought 5:30 was doable and without the cramps I still might have made it. But, the cramps happened and we deal with what we’re given in the race. I should have anticipated the effect of the humidity on my electrolyte balance and taken steps to avoid an electrolyte imbalance.
The good news was I was done. I had finished the race. Within a few minutes of finishing I felt great and had plenty of energy as the 4 or 5 gels and 80-100 oz of Gatorade that I’d consumed over the last hour kicked in.
Unbelievably, I had no problems with the cyst in my knee during the race and haven’t had any since then. I think I’m going to hold off on the surgery and see what happens as I begin to train again.
Final stats for the race were:
1500 meter swim – 38:02
19.9 mile MTB ride – 3:13:54
6.9 mile run – 2:08:57
