Upper Arlington 5-Miler + Weekend Recap

Saturday Swim-Bike-Run

Saturday was supposed to be a mock-triathlon triple workout. It started off well, as we got down to the pool and put in a 30 minute swim. Meredith was flying, completing 1600m in the 30 minutes. I was a little slower, coming in around 1400m, I think. At least she was going fast, and I wasn't as slow as I felt seeing her zoom by me.

We then drove out to her parents' house, where we were supposed to begin a 2 hour bike ride. The first street took us into a pretty nasty headwind, and Meredith got a little panicked about how tough it was, and decided to scrap the rest of the day's workouts. We were also going to watch her high school track team in the district meet, so we opted for that instead.

Caught Kremey-Handed!

On our way back from the swim, we stopped by Kroger to pick up some gels for our ride and run. As we left the store, we saw the Krispy Kreme truck parked outside, back door wide open, and full of pallets of sweet, sweet donuts. Sadly, as we sidled closer to get a better look (and sniff), the driver came out of the store with a "Don't think I can't see you guys..." and a smile. No free pallets of donuts for us.

Sunday Bike-Run

Take two.

Sunday began a bit on the chilly side, so we postponed our bike till late morning. Again, we started from Meredith's parents' place, and rode out from there to Croton along the same path I used for my 2:30 ride. When we told our 5-year-old nephew where we were riding, his response? "You should take a car, actually." It's a nice ride for two, since we were able to ride side-by-side for quite a few of the quiet roads. It was a beautiful day, and I'm sure Meredith will post some pictures from the ride.

Because we were running a race the next morning, we shortened the run from 30 minutes down to 1 mile, so we'd still get the brick experience without tiring the legs any more than necessary. Our nephew decided to tag along on his bike and entertain us with his comments.

"And you know what?" (Followed by story after story)
"Actually, Uncle Dave is running faster."
"Actually, Meredith is running faster."
"You guys should try to run a little faster."
"I'm faster than you guys are."

Upper Arlington 5-Miler

I mentioned before that I had a faster half-marathon PR pace than 5 mile pace. This race reminded me why that was. It's not a flat course, for what we're used to around here!

Mile 1 - Mostly flat, with a little bit of roll. Dodging around people, being passed by people you'll see again later...the usual small race things.

8:14

Mile 2 - This mile is almost exclusively downhill, and winds through wooded residential areas. There's a loop at the bottom, and I just got to the point where it splits in time to see the leader.

7:52

Mile 3 - "What goes down, must come back up." There's a bit of a false hope in this mile, too. After you climb for a while, it turns and flattens out, only to head back down again. I just tried to take little steps and not burn out too badly.

8:34

Mile 4 - More uphill, and a nice short stretch on a wooded trail. The runners were pretty sparse near me in this part, and the guy I had picked out to tail stopped to walk. :P

8:30

Mile 5 - Some slight uphill, but probably flat to anyone not from the midwest. I was a little disappointed I couldn't bring it in better than I did, as I felt like I ran faster than my split indicated.

8:24

Overall time: 41:34 (8:18/mile) PR by 1:04, or 19s/mile.

I was happy with the way I ran this race. I tried to adjust my strides to the slope, and I think it worked out pretty well. I didn't fall apart on any of the uphill stretches. There wasn't a whole lot in the tank to sprint in to the finish, but that's probably a sign that I ran well. Or at least that I had done a bunch of workouts this weekend. :)

More Hardware!

So, despite my complete lack of any epee experience, I managed to take home second place in that smaller tournament tonight. (Tempered by the fact that most of the field shared my lack of experience)

I swept my pool except for a loss to my "A" ranked assistant coach, earning myself the 2 seed again, and a first round bye straight to the semifinals. After a close win against the same fencer that knocked me out of the foil tournament semis, I got to face my coach again in the final, and lost 15-4 - better than I thought I'd do.

Lucky for me, the head coach decided on the spot that coaches couldn't get awards, so I ended up taking home the first place trophy, despite my second place finish. It doesn't quite feel justified, but who am I to turn down shiny new hardware? :)

Brick: House

Cold + Wet + Rush Hour = Trainer

Unfortunately, today's morning brick* had to begin in the living room due to the above conditions. The Today show took me through a fairly easy spin on the trainer for an hour, and then it was out the door for a 30 minute run. During the first brick a couple weeks ago, I had a tough time getting my pace below 10 minute miles. This time, however, I was moving much more easily. I wish I had splits for the miles, because the first one felt slow, but I ended up finishing 3 miles in 26 minutes and change, and my effort wasn't even very high! It was really nice to have an easy workout with some encouraging results. Am I actually getting faster?

Fencing this weekend was a success as well. I placed third in the foil tournament, tempered only by a bad semifinal loss. I don't get frustrated purely from losing (much), but I do get frustrated when I don't do my best. That match was one of those times - my electric cords kept failing, so when I attacked, the machine kept stopping the match. I don't blame the loss on it by any means, but it was mentally tough to keep focused.

The good side of the tournament was that I beat a "D" ranked lefty in my preliminary pool bouts. This same fencer had knocked me out of my last tournament with a 15-3 thrashing, and it felt great to come back and get a little revenge. I went undefeated in my pools (defeating 2 D's), and earned the 2 seed for the eliminations. Again, a good sign, because I traditionally don't do so well in the pools when I match up against ranked opponents. I beat a fellow E 15-4 in my quarterfinal before bowing out.

I also entered the epee tournament, which, due to time constraints, will be completed at tonight's practice. It was pretty funny seeing all our foilists (myself included) trying to hit arms and legs and missing horribly. Epee touches feel cheap to me, though...clipping someone on the wrist just doesn't feel like a real score. That said, it's kind of fun to have a change of pace!

* For my non-triathlete readers, a brick is a back-to-back workout combining two or more of the sports.

Swim Time Trial 2

Emphasis on trial - I actually managed to get slightly slower since my 1000m time trial a few weeks ago. :(

Honestly, it wasn't a big difference. I finished in 20:07, up from 19:55 last time. 12 seconds over 1000m seems like pretty much the same pace to me, right? It's just the mental side of:

a) Getting slower during training.
b) Going over a big round number.

That's what got to me. Now, for the positives. I choked three times during my swim (should have taken an allergy pill, and we'll just leave it at that). How is that a positive? Well, I had to flip over and kick my way through the rest of the length each time, which probably cost me at least 12 seconds. Take those out, and I might have edged my last time.

The training plan recently hasn't had much swimming, which probably didn't help me either. This month has had each week focusing on one of the events, and I was really sick during swim week, so it's been probably four weeks since I had a solid week of good swimming.

For the weekend, I have another fencing tourney on Sunday. We're also supposed to do a 10K race, but I'm not quite sure if/when I'll do that. I don't really want to do it pre-tournament...but I also know I won't feel like it afterwards. :)

A Boy And His Anomaly

First off, I have to share a quote from our nephew the other day.

Meredith's Dad: "The price of Pepsi is astronomical right now."
J: "You can say that again!"

Guess a 5-year-old's paycheck doesn't stretch as far as it used to!



And now my story. I was reading Andrea's blog today, and I noticed her fine idea of including paces in her PR list on the side of the page. Like any good blogger, I decided to steal the idea.

Little did I know that my half marathon pace is actually faster than my 5 and 10 mile pace! I think I might now have a date with the Upper Arlington Memorial Day 5 Miler. I haven't really been running a lot as part of my tri training, but I would hope I can at least beat an 8:37 pace if I ran a minute faster than that per mile at the end of the OSU triathlon...

A Poem

Dedicated to the guy swimming in the lane next to me who kept trying to race me this morning:

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
It doesn't count
If you're wearing paddles.

What can I say, I was a science major. :)

I got to do my longest bike ride to date this Saturday: 2.5 hours out into the Ohio countryside. It was a pretty ride, with some dramatic clouds and springtime farm vistas. It was also the first time (okay, this might embarrass me...) that I put my front gear in the big ring for any extended period of time.

Wow, it really makes a difference.

Now, I know that in a tri, I usually should be in an easier gear so as to keep some legs for the run, right? But it was sure fun to see what I could do. I'm sure they're not great numbers for experienced bikers, but I was excited to hold stretches up in the low to mid 20's, with a max in the high 20s. (28ish? I can't remember now.) Getting out of the city, and even out of the suburbs, made riding a lot more fun. I'll have to get out that way more often on the long rides.

What else did I learn on the ride? I definitely need more calories, whether it's before the ride or during. I took one Hammer Gel with me to eat at the turnaround, along with two bottles of water, but sometime near the 2 hour mark, I really noticed my effort level going up to maintain the same speeds. Next time, I should at the very least have one more gel with me, and it might be good to have a gatorade and some pretzels, or something of that sort.

Race Report - Ohio State Triathlon 2008

Or: "You're a Good Bike, Charlie Brown"

Nervous didn't begin to describe me on Saturday night. I was obsessively staring at the checklist on the little USAT card, making sure I didn't forget anything for the race. How embarrassing would it be to show up to my first triathlon sans helmet, or shoes, or goggles? While Meredith was calmly watching TV, I spent the whole evening back and forth between the bedroom and my staging area behind the couch, carting things back and forth.

Surprisingly, I slept pretty well until the wake up call at 5:15. Our goal (which didn't happen) was to be down at the transition area by 6:30, which would give us plenty of time to set up. We racked our bikes, started getting out our gear, and then realized that we had an assigned rack. Oops. Take two. We went and got our chips, found out our assigned spot, and went to set up again. By coincidence, my dentist was set up two spots over, and we wished each other good luck.

I was a little self-conscious about wearing my bike shorts to the pool, but I certainly wasn't the only one. There was time for a quick bathroom break (Barefoot, ew. But thanks OSU for the most immaculate men's bathroom I've ever seen!), and then it was downstairs to the pool. The swim was a 400 meter serpentine swim, which entailed ducking the lane lines and alternating directions for each lane. They lined us up by estimated swim time, and off went the leaders.

It took about 30 minutes for us to get up to the start line. Just before we were to start, we noticed one guy going the wrong direction in one of the lanes. He had head-on collisions with three or four people, and we pointed him out to a race director, who rolled his eyes and made sure a volunteer stopped the swimmer at the end of the lane. :) Meredith started right before me - 5 seconds later and my first triathlon was underway!

My plan of jumping in next to the wall and beginning with a nice kick went awry, as I jumped too far out, and got a nice "dink" of my toes off the wall. Oh well. My stroke settled in fairly well, and I got a nice rhythm going. Unfortunately, I saw Meredith backstroking, and pulled up at the end of the lane to make sure she was okay. (Aw. And she was.) I passed her, and kicked off into lane 2. Over the rest of the swim, I think I was passed twice, and probably passed three or four swimmers. Mentally, I was trying to stay calm and not think about longer swims ahead, or the fact that the pool was waaaay deeper than the 4' I'm used to. I hit the ladder, and noticed Meredith right on my tail. She had a really strong swim after her initial troubles.

400m Swim (plus some running/stairs to transition): 9:19

We ran together up to transition, or so I thought. She says I was walking, which I very well might have been - it was kind of surreal finally being in the middle of the tri experience. I took some time to sit and dry off my feet before putting on my socks and bike shoes. (The words "You looked like you were getting a spa treatment" may have passed the lips of someone close to me afterwards. :P) By the time I left transition, Meredith was long gone.

T1: 2:35

The bike started out around Ohio Stadium, and then went west and north, before a jaunt down to the Schott and back, and then back across the river to the stadium. Two loops of that made up the course. I started off fairly quick (for me), and erred on the side of harder gears for most of the course. Just before the Schott turnaround on the first loop, I spotted Meredith. I passed her on the way back, and told her I'd see her on the run. Other than a few spare bike parts and potholes in the road, the bike was fairly uneventful. I stayed in aero position for probably 80% of the ride, which is pretty good for me.

20k Bike: 41:51 (17.8 mph)

Back up the ramp to transition we came, which this time I managed more quickly. It was just off with the bike shoes and helmet, on with running shoes and hat, and out the gate.

T2: 1:03

From the start of the run, funny enough, I could see my dentist maybe 25m ahead of me. For the first mile, I worked on narrowing that gap, and right around the first mile marker, I caught her. She tucked in behind me, and stayed there for the next two miles. Just after the halfway turnaround, I saw Meredith flying down the course. She said I had proved my superiority, but I truly still thought she'd catch me, as I wasn't that far ahead. Even though my mile splits were really quick for me, I managed to keep my pace steady, and before I knew it, we were winding around toward the finish. At the last turn, my dentist took off on a dead sprint. Even though I knew I had her on total time because of the staggered start, my competitive juices kicked in, and I did my best to win the race to the finish. Urged on by the announcer and the crowd, I managed to barely edge her by a step or two. I had barely gotten a drink and turned around before I was cheering Meredith in for her finish.

3 Mile(ish) Run: 22:47 (7:36 min/mile)

Total Time: 1:17:34 (4th in age group out of 8)

I really was happy and surprised by my time. The pre-race goals were:

1. Finish and have fun
2. 1:45
3. 1:30

Um...a 1:17 wasn't even on my radar. Although the course was short, my pace was somehow below my 5K PR pace, which was the biggest surprise. The swim was right about what I expected, and the bike was strong for me. Meredith finished around 1:19, also shattering her goal of 1:30. So, it was a successful day for the Gordons!

Next up is probably an international distance tri in a month. But for now, it's back to training!

Monthly Totals - April

Run: 33.3 miles
Bike: 7 hours, 45 minutes (no bike computer for most, so no distance)
Swim: 18050 m (about 11.2 miles)

It sure doesn't seem like much running! But I'm following the plan. The cold this past week didn't help my numbers either, but overall it was a good consistent month.

The swim distance certainly shatters anything I've done before. :)