Xterra Magnolia Hill

XTERRA MAGNOLIA HILL

I was introduced to a new level of athletic suffering this past weekend. How do those people in South Texas handle the heat and humidity?

I thought training in the mid to upper 90's heat of Albuquerque would adequately prepare me for this event. I need to think again. Training in a sauna might be better.

We flew in Friday night to Houston Hobby airport and drove to Navasota, about 90 miles NW of Houston. We checked into a brand new Comfort Inn and Suites hotel that was about 20 minutes from the race venue.

The hotel experience was among the best I have ever had. They gave me exactly what I asked for, a room on the side of the hotel away from the highway and on the top floor. I think we had the top floor all to ourselves on Friday night and there were only two or three more rooms occupied on Saturday night.
Saturday started out with a three hour round trip to The Woodlands to pick up my packet. I would have skipped the trip if I had known that I didn't need my packet to pre-ride the course as the race website had indicated. I would have just picked up my packet on race day. It was an interesting drive but I could have pre-ridden the course much earlier in the day without it.

Finally found the race venue after driving for an eternity on the back roads of Texas. By the time we got to the venue it was noon and almost 100 degrees.



Took a quick swim in the lake after gabbing with some of the other race participants. The water was extremely warm, so warm that it was not refreshing. There was enough humidity in the air that getting out of the water didn't cool me off at all. There simply was no evaporation from the skin. There was no way to get cool. The shade helped a bit but not much.

Then it was off to ride the course. I reasoned that it would be OK to pre-ride the bike section since the 13.5 mile course actually consisted of two 6.75 mile loops. So I could see the whole course by only riding 6.75 miles. I've never done much riding the day before a race and I suspected it might not be a good idea to work that hard in the heat but I didn't think the course was that hard and I didn't think it would be that hot on the mostly wooded course. I was wrong on both counts.



The course was not technically difficult but it was very twisty and 99% of the surface was sand, some of it deep in spots. So that made for some hard work. The other thing that made the course more difficult than I thought was that the trail, even though it was "in the woods", was wide enough on 80% of the course to be in full sun. The sections that were on narrow, heavily wooded trail were comfortable in comparison to the sections that were jeep roads or along the lake where there was no tree cover at all.
Long story short: I was tired, overheated and a little dehydrated when I finished one lap of the bike. The temperature, in the shade, according to the car thermometer was something like 104. We headed into town to get some lunch and went back to the hotel.

We return to the hotel and as I check the bike to clean and lube the chain I discover that the back tire is flat. I now have to put my only spare tube in the bike and repair the flat tube to use as a spare. After changing the tube I couldn't find a leak in the tube that had gone flat. I wonder if I hadn't closed the valve all the way when I added air. I put some more air in the spare tube and left it out to see if it held air while we went to dinner.

After relaxing for a bit we headed to College Station for a nice Italian dinner. I like my Spaghetti the night before a race. We got back about 9:30PM and the spare tube had held its air so I drained it and folded it into by backpack for the race. I got the rest of my gear laid out and went to bed, getting a fairly good night's sleep.

The plan was to get up at 6:15 and be on the road by 6:45 to the race venue. It should only take us 15 minutes to get there and I wanted to be there by 7, 2-hours before race time. Final preparation went flawlessly as I ate breakfast, filled my fluid containers, one being my Camelbak with Gatorade and ice, the other being my bike bottle with water, electrolytes and ice.

I was trying out a new trick this race. I had acquired a small roller bag that was insulated and so could double as a luggage bag and an ice chest for transition. Just the thing for those hot sunny transitions, I stashed my hydration containers in the insulated roller bag along with a zip-lock bag full of ice and off we went.

I thought we'd get to the venue in about 15 minutes but we had a couple of snafus. The first was having to make a pit stop in the woods by the side of the highway as my nerves overcame my digestive system and the second was missing the turnoff from the highway to the race. We did finally find the race only about twenty minutes later than I'd planned so no big deal.

It was almost 80 degrees at 7:30AM with no wind.

Here's a shot of the lake on race morning:

I got setup in transition and then headed for body marking and chip pickup. I went back to transition and tried to think of what I had forgotten since there's always something. I couldn't come up with anything although it would occur to me later what I forgot. Then it was time to relax until I did my warmup.


Ten minutes later after a half mile run, I headed into the water to warm up. I got a good warm up and left the water for the pre-race briefing. There would be three waves for the 800 meter swim: men under 40, men over 40 and women/relays. OK, I'm in wave 2.

10 minutes later wave one goes off and one minute after that wave 2 is in the water.


I hit my stroke right from the start. Breathing was good, sighting was good. I knew I hadn't warmed up quite enough because my arms felt heavy for the first 200 meters or so but everything was working perfectly. The buoys were a little hard to see since they were somewhat small and hard to make out over the churning mass of swimmers in front of me. I had to stop twice, just briefly, to double check my sighting but I was spot on and started swimming again right away.

Half way through the swim, I'm swimming along smooth and strong when, right out of nowhere, bam!, I get smashed in the head. A third wave swimmer, passing me in open water with no one else around me, managed to swim over me. I know I'm not that fast but this was ridiculous! Shortly after this I remember what I forgot to do in transition. I had not put my Camelbak's bladder inside the Camelbak. The bladder was sitting in the roller bag. It would be nice and cold but it would take me a minute to put it in the Camelbak. Oh well. Nothing to do but get it done as fast as possible in T1.

I rounded the second buoy and headed for home. The last 300 meters went by without incident and I exited the water after twenty minutes. Twenty minutes was a hair slower than I'd planned but I wasn't too disappointed.




After a 5 minute T1 ( I have GOT to get my T1 down under two minutes) I'm off on the bike. I did manage to save some time in T1 by sticking my gloves on my handlebars and putting them on while I was riding. I did however mange to forget my bike bottle with my electrolyte solution. Fortunately, it was a two lap course so I retrieved it after the first lap.



The bike was pretty uneventful. There were 3 or 4 bridges, all of which I managed to negotiate with the rubber side of the bike down. But it was HOT. I made a decision not to push because I knew that in this heat and humidity I wouldn't have anything left for the run if I did. So I just tried to maintain a steady pace and go as fast as I could on the downhills. All the granny gear climbs were in full sun with no wind. I only passed up one of the six aid stations, making sure I got plenty of water. First lap of the bike course was 1:05 and second lap was 1:10. By the time I finished the second lap the temperature was well over 100 degrees. I managed to pass four people on the bike course, all of which I never saw again.

Back from Lap 1 of the bike course

Headed out for lap 2 of the bike course

The run started out in the woods on a very narrow, very twisty trail. Getting any speed up was a challenge but that was OK because I was so overheated at this point that running for more than 30 seconds at a time was out of the question. Again, a steady pace with relentless forward motion was the plan.


The first mile of the two mile run course that we would traverse twice was in the woods in full shade. The second mile was around the lake in full sun with no wind and a temperature over 105 degrees. The lake itself was no help. The water was so warm and it was so humid out that when I dipped my hat in the water and put it back on my head I felt no cooling effect whatsoever.


After the first lap of the run I got some ice at the aid station and stuck it in my hat and inside my shirt. That helped a lot. Somewhere in the first part of the second run lap my Garmin stopped. When I left the woods I was dreading the last mile out in full sun but fortunately there was a light breeze for most of the last mile which not only made the last mile bearable but also enabled me to run quite a bit of the way around the lake.

Aid station just before lap 2 of the run

Headed into the woods for lap 2 of the run

I finally made it to the finish, 3-hours and 50-minutes after starting the race. I was DFL but only because the 8-10 people behind me had dropped out of the race. I took my chip off at the finish only to find out later that they didn't record my finish time. After all that, as of now, I'm listed as a DNF in the results. The race director is working on that.

Finally, the finish

Temperature at the finish? 109.

I couldn't relax though. Since it had taken me so long to do the race we now had to get back to the hotel, shower, pack, checkout of the room, pack the bike, load the car and get to the airport which was 90 miles away. We made our flight with 10-minutes to spare.