If someone had told me the night before the race that I would come in 2nd I would have considered that a great result.  The way the race played out I felt this was the most disappointing races in my tri career.  Because of top guys getting lost and falling I found myself in 3rd place with over 20 miles left on the bike.  I was just 3-4 minutes down on the leader.   I rode the two loop course very even.  Even though there was a lot of climbing my VI was just 1.02.  I averaged 277 and 279 watts for each of the two loops.  I started the run 2:30 behind Daniel Bretscher and right with Chris Bagg.  I never really felt that good on the run from the beginning but I was closing slowly.  It was down to 2:00 after 2.5 miles and was down to 45 sec with 5 miles to go but I was unable to close anymore.  I really had nothing in my legs.  I guess that is what happens when you only run a handful of times in 10 weeks.  I do take my hat of for Daniel he is strong runner and kept pushing not to let me close the gap.   My achilles  was very swollen and sore after the race so it looks like it is time to go to the Doc.

Overall the Spirit of Racine is a great race and I would highly recommend this to anyone.  It is well run and is a great course.  It is challenging yet not too hard.  The only negative about the race is the swim is not in a very clean body of water.  Other than that I can not say enough good things about this race.   It is really ashame that everyone flocks to 70.3 races but independent races seem to have a tough time attracting racers.  I have done a bunch of 70.3 races and this is just as good as the best 70.3 races!  It is also much cheaper!

I was scheduled to be home at midnight on Sunday, but after many delays and circling around the Portland airport for 45 minutes we were diverted to Albany New York where we were put up in hotels for the night.  After waiting in the airport all morning I did not make it home until Monday afternoon.  It made for a very long weekend.

I am a huge believer in training and racing with power. I started training with power 3-4 years ago and started racing with it last year. Every year I seem to learn more about power and using it to its fullest. The other day I was doing a 1 hour 1/2 Ironman race pace workout. The goal was to maintain the watts that I wanted to hold for 56 miles or about 2:00-2:15. I finished the workout and avg 290 watts. I did a similar workout last year before Eagleman and avg 275 watts. The thing that concerned me was that I only avg about 24 mph. Last year at Eagleman I avg 277 watts and avg 25.6 mph. Could my bike and position be that much slower than last year? I then realized that when training maintaining a high power # is the goal regardless of speed. Although when racing the goal is to maximize speed while producing the least amount of power. When training vs racing with a PT is very different.

A few days after I came to this realization I was looking around the web and came across Joel Friel’s blog where he was talking about this very subject. I thought he summed it up perfectly, here is a portion of what he said,

“In key workouts one of our purposes is to stress the body with high power loads and high heart rates. Speed is not critical. Stress is. A race is just the opposite. The whole purpose here is speed. And if he can produce high speed with low power and low heart rate all the better. The idea is to keep stress as low as possible while riding as fast as possible. Doing so means he will have more in the tank for the run.”

I am still trying to recover from my last race.  I ran Monday night for the first time since the race and didn’t know if I would be able to run 5 miles at 7:30 pace.  I was dying, both Achilles were sore, my calf was cramping, my quads felt bruised and my hamstrings were tight.  I finished the run and had to sit down in my driveway and wait for the pain to subside before I went inside.   I ran today and felt a bit better so that is a plus.  I am really not in good running shape!

My latest way to get some training in is biking to work.  It saves gas $ and I get a workout, win/win.   The only problem is my commute is only 8 miles one way and it is on a very busy road with lots of lights.  I rode the other day an my AP was 210 and my NP was 270.  Hammer, stop, Hammer stop.   I am going to try and bike 3+ days a week.  This is probably going to be the only biking I do during the week.  I will do one “long” ride on the weekend for 2 hours or so.   On a positive biking note I did my 1st bike interval workout in nearly 3 months.  It actually wasn’t too bad 5×7min at 320-330 watts with 3minutes rest.   I avg 267 NP.

This was the 3rd year that I have raced Eagleman 70.3.  It is a great race and I would highly recommend it to anyone.    It is flat and fast.  This was my first race of the year so I was a bit unsure of how I would do  especially since I have not trained much since my 2nd son was born in the beginning of April.  I had also had a problem with my calf cramping so I have only run a few times during this time.   The plan was to fly down on Sat morning and fly back Sunday afternoon.  I would need to race fast just to make my flight.  My flight was leaving from BWI at 2:45 on Sunday and the race was 80 miles away.

My father and I arrived on Sat to blistering hot weather.  We saw a temperature sign that read 98 at 4:30pm.  It was hot!  The pre-race stuff was pretty uneventful.  The pro meeting was at 4:00pm so we hung around till then and headed to our hotel to check in.  We grabbed a quick bit to eat at Olive Garden and I was in bed by 8:45.  Which is really early for me.

Race day morning:  The alarm went off at 4:15am and I was ready to go.  Normally the night before a race I don’t sleep that well.  This night was one of the best nights sleep ever.  We packed up my stuff and headed to the race.  When we arrived we were told that pro’s would not be allowed to wear wetsuits.  It actually didn’t surprise me at all.  I don’t know why but I thought that would happen.  During my warm-up jog I felt my calf starting to cramp up again.  I tried not to worry about it and hoped that 56m of racing would “loosen” it up.

The race started at 6:45am and immediately I lost the group.  That was my main goal of the day.  To stay with the lead group.  I spent the whole swim swimming alone.  I could see a group of women swimming a bit behind me and to the side.    I got out of the water a saw 30:47.  Out of the 3 disciplines swimming is the only thing I have been really doing the past 8 weeks.  So I was very disappointed.  Nothing I could do about it now, just get my bike and try to catch some people.

I race with a PT and was hoping to race around 290 watts.  With the heat I decided to back that down a few watts.  After about 15 minutes on the bike I realized that 280 was probably more realistic because of my lack of training.  I had adjusted my aerobars a bit the day before, this made my hands to far forward so I kept sliding down the seat.  So every 30 sec or so I had to slide back up to the top of the seat.  Which was super annoying.  The bike rolled on and I felt good easily pedaling along.  I picked it up a bit near the end to finish in 2:11:21 about 30 seconds slower than last year.  Not bad although not at all where I wanted to be.   I averaged 277 watts and 279 NP.  And my VI was 1.00, very impressive huh?  I had moved into 11 starting the run and new that there would be a few drop outs so if I had a good run I could  move into the money (7th).

The first step of the run my calf started to cramp up.  I thought about just dropping out since I wasn’t sure I would be able to run 13 miles.  The only way I could get it not to cramp was to land on my heal and push off with my heal with my heal.  So there was no calf contraction of my left calf.  I knew this wouldn’t be fast but hopefully it would get me to the finish.  My 1st mile was 5:33 which was very surprising.  My next 5 miles were all between 5:40-45.  I had pasted a few people and had moved up into 8th.  I felt good, except for my calf.  Things started to get a bit tougher between 7 and 8.  This is where I passed 3 more people who were really struggling in the heat.  And by the time I got to 9 I was really struggling.  The last 4 miles I was running 6:15-30.  I knew at mile 9 that I was not going to catch anyone in front of me and most likely nobody was going to catch me.  I finished in 04:04:49 good enough for 5th.  Not bad all things considered.

I hung around for a few minutes then jumped in the river to try and get my body temp below 100.  Within 30min of finishing I was disassembling my bike and heading to the airport.  Luckily there was no traffic and we made it to the airport with plenty of time.  We were dropping off the rental car at 1:00pm after finishing at 11:00am.  The flight was on time and I was at home in Maine at 4:15pm with my wife and two sons, Jack and Hunter.  It was great that I was able to race and still spend an afternoon with my kids.

Overall not a bad day.  I raced last year and thought I raced the perfect race.  This year I had a similiar result but felt I could improve in all three disciplines. Hopefully I will be able to find some more time to train so that I can start racing with the top guys.