triandgiveadam: 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.