Lake Stevens 70.3 race report

Saturday August 14/2010

Woke up early today and set out for a quick 12 mile ride and ALMOST crashed. This was the closest I've come to going down since the "incident" in Hawaii. Kyle, John and I were riding with our Doctor host and on one of the descents he says there is a sharp turn near the bottom. The three of us thought that meant "near the bottom" when it flattens a bit... Nope! The turn was greater than 90 degrees and at the steepest part of the decent, not at the botton. John was up an adjacency hillside, and Kyle was up against a fence when I came up on them. Tri bikes don not brake or turn like a road bike. John pulls a u-turn to come off his side hill, he and I nearly T-bone. I simply can't stop in time and fly past John, hop the curb and protruding man hole cover, narrowly miss a fence and roll up onto someones front grass. We all couldn't believe what just happened and with everyone being ok we just started to laugh. Off to check in!

Check was smooth and I happened upon my wife's favorite triathlon person (other than me of course) sister Madonna Buder. Just to clarify this woman is 80 years old. Here is a pic and her splits for the race. Swim 46:50 Bike 3:44:53 Run 2:52:05 Overall 7:37:56 What an amazing woman.  Speaking to her it seemed like she was 65.  There must be something to this Ironman thing....

Kyle, John and I got on our bikes again and rode one lap of the run course.  Seems to be hilly and not shaded.  We threw our bikes into transition jumped in the lake.  The air temp was hot and the water was perfect.  We then proceeded to drive the first loop of the bike course and only managed to get lost 3 times.  Thank goodness for race day volunteers and air stations to keep us three on track.  We had heard that the course was fast with only a few rollers.  With my veteran eye I quickly disagreed with the previous statement and deem this course very beautiful but challenging.  The day concluded with a nice dinner on the water followed by some last minute race race prep.

Sunday August 15/2010

It's race morning and the boys are excited.  I love that I am now 14 races into this journey and I still get excited about the event.  I love all the athletes, the competition and the energy.  This is what I love to do!!  The race plan was to swim hard and then wait in T1 for Kyle to emerge out of the water and then attack the bike and run together.  Kyle has high hopes of qualifying for the 70.3 world championships to be help in Clearwater Florida later this year.  If John managed to have a blazing swim he too would join us on the course.  Johns goal for the day was to  improve on his overall time in Boise and in his words "feel like James when I cross the finish line"  Well feel like James could mean many things if you have followed this years progress.   I assume he meant the feeling I had when I crossed the finish line in Texas after running an 1:35 PR with plenty of spring left in my step or possibly the feeling at Steelhead when I blazed the course and posted a personal best 4:39!  I highly doubt he was suffering to the throwing up cramping feeling I had in St. Croix with an IV bag attached to my arm or the I wanna quit and I'm a baby cause I can't feel my legs in Florida kind of feeling.  But I'm just guessing.... his words, not mine.

Best swim course of 2010

It's time to get off my ass!

Yep, my leg is still there.

Our wave was up and this was gonna be a good day.  The swim gun goes off and this swim gets a number 1 ranking in my books so far this year.  The swim course was where the local rowing club trains and competes.  So what you ask?  There was this perfect white cable anchored in the water along the whole swing course, which means that I didn't sight once!  I was able to keep my head down and just "do work"!  I should have posted a faster swim time with no sighting to do but if I'm being positive it means I must be a good sighter and it doesn't affect my swim outcome;)  With 100 meters to go the leaders from the swim wave behind me caught me and oh man what a chaos!  They too were swimming over this same sight line and I'm pretty sure they didn't even know I was there as a group of 5 literally swam right over top of me.  I am always impressed with these swimmers as I still can't comprehend how they go this fast.  Within 3 of their strokes they were one me and past me.  I kept my wits about me and finished up the swim strong!

I took my sweet time in transition as the game plan was to wait for Kyle.  So chalk this T1 as the slowest of the year.  In about 3 minutes Kyle emerged from the water.  I cheered him on to his fastest T1 one of the year.  We headed out on the bike together and I hoped Kyle hadn't got too excited in the water.  He kept dropping off a bit so I sat up and waited for him to come up beside me.  I asked him how he was doing and he said he was having trouble getting his heart rate down.  I told him to just chill out, relax and take in some nutrition.  He eventually calmed down and about half way through the first lap I hear Kyle yell "I feel GREAT!"  Oh good I thought, let's do some work!  Kyle and I fed off each others energy for the first lap and by the time we were well into the ride we noticed we had company.... lots off company actually.  Six or so other athletes decided they wanted to just take some time off and sit on our wheels.  At one point as I sat up at the base of a hill one guy had the nerve to yell out "come on guys, let's keep up the pace"  The nerve of some people!!  We finished the bike strong and had a complete blast.  This course was tree lined and challenging.  There was a total of about 4 miles on the entire course that was flat.

JOHN

ROSE

We rolled into T2 as a group and headed out onto the run.  I did some quick math and figured we were in about 10th position and would have to post a sub 1:40 on the run for Kyle to have an outside chance of qualifying for worlds.  We shot out of T2 and tried to settle into a pace.  I looked down at the trusty Garmin and found that we were cruising sub 7 min miles.  I pulled the reins and said we needed to chill out.  We slowed down and held a great pace for the first lap of the race.  I was ready to ramp it up and "bring it home" on the second lap.  With little to no warning Kyle comes to a dead stop and puts his hands on his knees.... (this image hit far too close to home as it was the same pose my 7 year old busted me doing the week before)  Kyle exclaimed that he was sick and needed some relief and NOW.   

KYLE

WOODRUFF

We walked for a few minutes then limped into an aid station.  Kyle then disappeared for about five minutes.  The next 6 miles were a walk run walk run till we made it home.  The support from the other runners was awesome and with a 1/2 mile to go in the race big John Rose caught up with us.  The three of us finished off strong and crossed the finish line together.  

The Draft!

John was super happy with his time as he felt like “James” at the finish and he took 20 minutes off of his time in Boise.  Kyle was demoralized but soon came to the realization that it was better for this to happen here rather than in two weeks at his Ironman in Louisville.  I was happy that I could help Kyle through this difficult run as I’m pretty sure I knew what he was going through due to a St Croix experience earlier this year. 

Strong Finish Boys!

Arrested Development and Charlie the unicorn

The simple things in life that get us to our destinations quicker. Today started at 5am when Kyle Woodruff picked my up to head to Lake Stevens WA for race number 14. Can you believe we are this far into the journey. The drive actually went by pretty quickly thanks to season two of Arrested Development. This is one funny show and I recommend it to anyone with a sense of humor. Thank you John Rose for bringing this visual goodness.

All day yesterday was taken up with me on the phone trying to get through to Delta as they screwed up with the air miles they promised me. With ZERO luck getting anywhere through the phone lines I resorted back to old faithful... social media. I started to use the youtube channel and their twitter account to get their attention. Shocker... they contacted me within 15 minutes and we're on a path to a resolution. I am so very tired of Delta.

14 hours later we arrived at a friend of John Rose's. He is a spin surgeon and has a beautiful house here in Washington. He made us a very nice dinner and we spent the rest of the night chatting. His girlfriend introduced us to some youtube classics (the kind of video's that are perfect to watch when you have very little to do when traveling.) Just type in Charlie the Unicorn in... the things people have time to create and watch. The hit count here is insane!!! Can you imagine if each of those views donated only a quarter - wow!

Anyways this is a big weekend.... well ok it's just another 70.3 but is one race closer... tomorrow we check in and get ready.

KSL Sports Beat

I just wanted to share with you the quick story that KSL Sports beat decided to run on me.  This is exciting times for me.  This kind of thing means my story is getting out there and more main stream.  This type of exposure is what I have been working hard to get to..... so here it is;

Boulder 70.3 race day

Sunday August 8, 2010

We woke up early and got the remainder of our things together and packed the kids in the car.  Triathlon starts are not kid friendly as far as the time of day is concerned.  Allowing the most possible sleep in time for the kids I pulled up to the transition area just as an announcement comes over the loud speakers...

"Transition will close in 2 minutes"

I remained as calm as a cucumber and knew I could set up in that time.  By this stage of the game I better be able to lay out a transition area like a nascar pit crew would do it.  Easy as pie.... not sure about this saying cause I've watched my wife make some awesome pies and that stuff just doesn't look easy.

I super glad they rushed me out of transition so I can now stand waterside for a good hour until my race wave starts.  I just chilled with the kids and watched all the other 1700 athletes take their mark!  My wave goes off and the weather and water were perfect.  The water was just cold enough and as calm as could be with 1700 other athletes flailing around in penguin suits.  I swam hard and well.  Came in with a solid time of 33:04.

I came out of the water feeling like it was a little long or maybe I wasn't being very strong mentally today.  I couldn't seem to take my mind to another place.  I transitioned quickly and headed out to what was suppose to be a fast bike course.  The course started with 6 miles of climbing and I couldn't figure out how this was suppose to be a fast course.  Well I found out at mile 10  or 11 when we made a right hand turn and started to fly.  I think I saw a camera man about half way down this very long and fast section of the course.  Hopefully that picture turns out cool.  The course was downhill most of the way home with some easy rollers.  This was a two lap course so I headed out to do it again.  With about 5 miles to go on the bike things started to go wrong with my stomach.  I started to get a cramp like I did in St Croix when I got sick all over the run course.  I had high hopes that this would not happen again.  I came off the bike with great time for me (considering the double I did last weekend and some tummy trouble) with a time of 2:29:00

I saw Sunny and the girls as I came off the bike and was excited to see them for the start of the run.  These heavy legs were heavy.  This was the closest I came to wanting to quit.  I got off the bike and ran for about 400 yards till I saw my kids.  I stopped and walked over to them.  With huge concern and sternness  my 7 year old Lucy says;

"Dad you said we don't walk when we race"

Yep... this is me walking.  It's tough to get to a 1:59 run without some of this!

I did say that so off I went running with a gut ache.  I ran most of this first lap with the words of Lucy flowing through my head.  The heat was on the rise and I wasn't getting any faster out there.  I had high hopes of getting of the race course to cool down in the lake quickly, but that just wasn't in the cards today.  I saw them again on the second lap feeling worse than the first and when I approached them I walked again... this time Lucy says;

"Dad don't give up, it's a world record"

Then my 6 year old Lily chimes in and says;

"I'll walk the rest of the race with you if you need me to" (not really knowing how far 6 miles really is)

I had flash back of St Croix right here as I assumed the "barfing" position.  I managed not to....whew!

I laughed, thanked her and tried to start running again.  I cried for the next mile trying to pull my crap together!  At every mile my Garmin would beep letting me know that another mile was down.  Each beep was small celebration and a little victory.  I ran into some of my friends from DailyMile and chatted for a second.  They each motivated me in different ways and kept me going.  I would not have made it through this run without my two oldest girls though.  I finished the run with a run time of 1:59:36.  I snuck in just under 2 hours.  There is a significant mental difference to me to come in under that 2 hour mark, even if just by seconds.  Finished with a 5:05:43 overall time.  Next weekend is Lake Stevens and I don't want to..... but I will.

After the race I slumped through the food line, met my kids lake side and flopped into the lake to cool down.  The kids greeted me with open arms and were excited to see my medal.  To them I was one if the fastest guys on the course - you gotta love perception.  They had used the sand and built a dam to dam up some of the lake water.  They were super excited to show me that they had build a "Tri and Give a Dam" dam!  I loved to see that my kids got what I was doing and why I was doing it!

The Boulder 70.3 Give a Dam

The day ended with us all walking through the pet store and through Outdoor World (huge hunting, fishing and outdoor store that has lots of things to see for the kids)

We loaded up early the next day and drove through Vale to get home.  This is possibly one of the prettiest drives in the US.  It was

B-E-A utiful!

On the way home we stopped at a GNC and I was excited to see RokitFuel on the shelves with my picture and website on it!  Every little bit of exposure helps.  Yahoo!!

We made it home safe and sound!  We will do it all again next week in Lake Stevens.  This next week I will be joined by John Rose from DUB Nutrition who wants a bike split rematch from Boise and Kyle Woodruff who is will be trying to qualify for the 70.3 World Championships.  I will be grateful for the company on the long drive!

Boulder 70.3 In good company!

After getting home from my double weekend I decided I wanted to not do any workouts this week.  I just rested and stayed off my feet as much as possible.  It was actually a hard thing to do.  My friends and training partners kept inviting me and I had to turn them down.  But I think it will pay off and hopefully I will be able to perform this weekend with a sub five hour race.


After a long travel weekend last week I wanted to spend some extra time with my family, so I invited them to come to Boulder with me.  We found sitters for my 3 littlest ones (thanks you sitters) and loaded up my other two daughters and friend Cole (a boy we sit).  This made the drive much more enjoyable.  The kids just sat in the back and were entertained by movies, and my wife and I chatted about how fast she is which made the drive go by quickly.   We arrived in Colorado late in the evening with no troubles.  My good friend and Ironman buddy Brent Fowler was kind enough to let us crash in his condo while is out of town training to be a doctor.

Woke up today after a great night sleep and and headed to check in.  As I went thought the motions Sunny and the kids went down to the lake side beach and did some swimming.  I got all checked in and then went and rode some of the course on my Ellsworth bike.  I was hearing a clicking noise so I took the bike back to the expo and had it tuned up!  Taking my bike apart and putting it back together every weekend is a pain in my ass!!

At the expo I stopped by a booth called Compex.  They attached their system to my legs and let it run through a cycle.  This is an muscle performance enhancement system which uses electrostimulation.  It felt awesome and I think I need to look into one of these systems.  It would be awesome for post race recovery while I fly!  Check out the facts at shopcompex.com
I took Sunny back to the booth and she too agrees that the system felt awesome and says "we need one of these!"

I find myself back at the condo getting my gear ready to race tomorrow.  Thanks for all the support and best of luck to all the racers.  It should be a nice day and it will be nice to have my wife and some of my kids there to cheer me on.

This is my 13th race..... so why not donate 13 dollars... come on.... I dare you

Calgary 70.3

Looks like I'm leading a pack...

Sunday August 1, 2010

My mom flung open the bedroom door and says “I slept in and we have to leave right now in order for you to catch the shuttle for the lake!”

I sprung up with only 3 1/2 hours of sleep, grabbed my things and jumped in the car. We pulled up to the shuttles, got body marked and jumped on. It had rained all night here also and it looked to be another cold raining day for us athletes. I caught about 15 minutes of sleep on the ride to the lake. I was welcomed at my transition spot by the TSN crew (TSN is the Canadian ESPN affiliate and they are highlighting my project during the race telecast). So they gathered some early footage for the day. The mosquitos were giant lake side and seemed to be in attack mode. The only form of protection from these giants I could think of was my wetsuit, so on it went. Instead of the swim waves being broken up into every age group they lumped a bunch of age groups together and created fewer larger waves. I thought this was a great idea! The larger wave sizes didn’t seem too big and it prevented athletes from waiting over an hour to start their race. Good call Canada!

Wet Riding.

This swim was very pretty. A clockwise loop around the boats and under the bridge. The water was calm and colder than most of my races this year. I think I enjoy the cooler temps over being hot in the water. When I started the swim I could feel the effort in my shoulders from the previous days efforts, both the swim and sitting in the aero position. I also seemed to have a harder time swimming in a straight line. I settled in and today was gonna be whatever it was gonna be. I ended up having a good swim with a time of 33:56.

So glad that ride is over.... long day in the saddle.

Another switch from the water to wet bike gear. The weather had cleared a bit and we didn’t have rain while biking but the temperature was cooler and the roads were wet and slippery. I took extra caution on the roads as a few riders had gone down already. A crash now would not be worth the extra few seconds a would gain from being aggressive. The legs were heavy and not firing. I felt tired and slow. Last year in this same course I posted a time of 2:28 and this year rolled in at 2:51 - 23 minutes slower than last year and 31 minutes slower than yesterday. That extra time in the saddle sure is noticeable. The TSN crew caught up with me several times and I had a good time biking hard when the camera was rolling. It was great to finally make it to T2 and see my cheering family. This is rare for me to have a dedicated fan club at a race. They were all cheering as I transitioned and I remember saying that this was way harder than yesterday!

"What the hell am I doing?"

I knew that it was going to be a long day on the run course with how heavy my legs were on the bike. I thought there would be no way to get this run under two hours and much walking was going to take place. To my surprise my legs felt better off the bike then they did on it. Still not a blistering time but I mustered up a 1:49:11 half marathon time and felt really good about it. It was fun again to see the TSN guys on the motorbikes filming. I seemed to go faster with them around. I may need to hire my own film crew one day so I go faster all the time:) The entire course was beautiful and really well run. I would rank this race top 3 for the year!

My conclusion in regards to the double 70.3 weekend. Difficult. I would have to say that this was harder than doing a full Ironman.... gasp. I may take flack for this but here are just a few reasons why.

1- The Travel time in between races.

2- The prep time times two (getting the bike set up and all nutrition and gear in order)

3- Logistics

4- Lactic acid to set in between events

Did I win... In my own way yes! 

5- And more.......

Being filmed is a good time!

I am sure this could be argued both ways but either way this was a tough weekend. I hope to stay off my feet and recover this week as I get to race in Boulder next weekend.... off to enjoy a yummy burger with my family.

DOUBLE DOUBLE PLEASE

Friday July 30, 2010

The big double race weekend. I woke up at 4:30 to give myself enough time to get to the airport. “The man” and owner of MyMark Tyrell was kind enough to drag himself out of bed and drive me to the airport. Many thanks big guy - I know Sunny appreciates it too.

I was super excited to not be flying Delta and waited in line to check in on my United flight. I had trouble finding my flight at the kiosk and had to go to the counter for help. I was kindly informed that I did not have a United reservation and that I was indeed flying Delta.... grrrrr! As I was waiting I got as message from fel

low triathlete and ph

otographer Eric Wynn. He was in the fancy Delta VIP lounge area

and invited me to join him as I waited for my flight. It was super nice and I enjoyed some free food and cushy lounge chairs. I think I just figured out where the bike check fee money goes;)

My flight was delayed an hour so we sat on the run way while they changed out a mechanical box. Always grateful when they find these things but it’s frustrating to just sit there in the plane when it’s not flying. At first glance I didn’t think the flight delay was going to make i

t tight for me to check in for me race. I figured with 4 hours of time on the ground I would have plenty of time to drive the 115 miles from Chicago Illinois to Benton Harbor Michigan. After a smooth flight I snagged my bags and discovered that the rental place couldn’t find my car rental. Seriously? Another delay.... why not make this harder than it has to be. With my “no worries it will all work out” attitude I pulled out my trusty iPhone and booked another car through Orbits. Turned out I got a better deal on the car and it was a bigger one - which is great cause my bike case is massive.

Started the drive with what I thought was still lots of time until I h

it Friday Chicago traffic. What a joke this turned out to be. I also didn’t factor in the 1 hour time change from Illinois to Michigan. After driving for 3 1/2 hours I made it to check in with 15 minutes to spare. I now had the challenge of

finding my hotel which was 30 miles away in South Bend Indianapolis. I found it with little difficulty, checked in and got all my things ready for race morning. To recap I woke up at 4:40 in Utah landed in Illinois, drove to Michigan to check in for the race and am sleeping in Indianapolis..... and let’s not forget that I am racing in Calgary Canada SUNDAY.

Saturday July 31, 2010

After a very short night sleep I woke up to heavy rains. I headed back to Benton Harbor to get all set up for the race. The lake looked great but the skies looked bad. 1500 athletes were all soaked, cold and trying to huddle under pop up tents in an attempt to stay dry.

While standing in line for the restrooms I started talking to a guy behind me who was wearing a jacket from Canada.

I asked him “What part of Canada are you from?” and he told me the “Toronto area.”

I told him I grew up in Calgary and he said “I think there is a race there this weekend.”

I said “Yes there is and that I am doing it!” He says “Wait, are you James Lawrence?”

In my head I thought “holy crap yes I am” but only said the “yes I am” part out loud. He proceeded to tell me that this was my 11th and 12th race of my quest and that he had a

notification about my quest that came across his blackberry this morning. This was a cool experience for me to have as it is hard for me to measure how well I am doing at getting the word out there. This is a definite step in the right direction. I pray every night that this project isn’t a waste of my time and that it will both pay off for the African people and my family.

The pros went off in the rain and I waited an hour fifteen for my wave to go off. I tried to switch my swim wave to give myself some additional time to get back to Chicago and fly to Canada but was denied. By the time I hit the water the rain had stopped falling from the sky, everything was already wet but I prefer to bike without rain fall.

This swim in Lake Michigan was FAST and my time reflects this - 30:52. The nice thing about this swim is that it is a point to point. No turns, just swimming straight. The water was clear and smooth.

I jumped out of the water and put on my wet shoes and headed out. The first part of this ride was FAST. There were some small rollers but they didn’t seem to slow m

e down. I was able to jump up the rollers and fly down the back sides. I hit the half way point of the bike course, looked down at my clock and a big smile came to my face. I was flying, feeling great and way ahead of pace. It was a good thing I was having a great day because after doing some quick math I didn’t have the luxury of going slow due to the drive back to Chicago to catch my flight. By the half way point of the ride my goals changed, bust it hard on the bike with a new PR and hold on during the run. To my ultimate surprise I was able to increase my pace over the second half of the bike and ended up finishing up with a personal best time of 2:20:04 averaging 23.99 MPH!!!

I headed out on the run and felt decent. My run has been a frustrating puzzle for me to figure out. I can’t seem to throw down consistent times. I am working on getting my speed up but is tough when I am in the middle of this project. The run was mostly flat with only one significant climb that we had to do twice. I forgot to grab my Garmin on the run and just settled into comfortable pace not knowing how fast I was moving. I never felt too heavy and powered my way to the finish. I quickly snagged my finished medal, T-shirt and bike and bolted to my car. I took off not knowing my finishing time. Once settle into the drive to the airport I check my times. 4:39:24..... WHAT? A new PR by 11 minutes. I WAS SUPER EXCITED and called my wife to share the great news. Maybe I should book my flights really tight after each race. It seemed to have created some much needed urgency in my racing.

I was super hungry and needed some food. I rushed out of there so quickly that I only grabbed a few pieces of fruit. OK SO GET THIS. On the way to the airport I had to pay 3 tolls. Right before the last stop there was a McDonald’s right in the middle of the freeway. Literally in the middle. As traffic slowed for the toll booth I pull into the center and bought burger, fries and a Dr. Pepper. I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to buy from this one of a kind McDonald’s. To make the experience more memorable I placed my order with a girl named LAQUANDA! It was perfect.

I got caught up in some traffic but ultimately made it back in time to catch my flight. I disassembled and packed my bike in the rental car parking lot, and checked in.

Race one of the double weekend was a raging success!

I was greeted in Calgary by my dad at 8:45 pm. We went straight to their house and built up my bike. We then drove the 40 minutes out to the lake and T1 to check in my bike. The race directors of the Calgary race were super accommodating allowing my dad to pick up my race packet the day before and allowed me to check in my bike after it had closed. I was met at my parents place by an old high school friend whom I have kept in contact with. Vicky now does massage and volunteered to work on my legs in between these two races. This was awesome and I can’t thank Vicky enough. I did my last minute prep and finally got to bed at 1:10 in the morning.