Last Saturday morning, I ran the Trick or Tri olympic distance for the second year in a row. This was my second Olympic distance race of my 2016 season, and my third of four races overall. Let’s get into some stats of my results, shall we?

Some Context

I completed the Malibu Triathlon in September with a satisfying time on the fast end of my goal range of 2:33 to 2:44, with a final time of 2:35. I knew that the Malibu Triathlon was a bit more difficult because of the hills on the bike leg, so I thought I might break 2:33 and even figured breaking 2:30 was not impossible if I pushed myself.

That said, I said to Danielle on Friday that I didn’t really feel very heavily invested in this race. I didn’t know why, exactly. She posited that it was the only race this season that wasn’t special in some way to me. The first race, the Pacific Coast Triathlon, was unique because I was doing it with three coworkers, two of whom were doing their first triathlon. Then there was the Malibu Triathlon, on my home turf, which was also a well known race reputed for being very scenic, of course. And my race next month will be the Turkey Tri, which I’ll be doing with my big brother Keegan, my best friend Erik, my future brother-in-law Ryland, and a couple of Keegan’s friends; this will also be my third time completing this course, which was my first ever triathlon two years ago.

I went to this one alone, and felt pretty neutral about the whole thing. I hadn’t even set goal times for my segments, except the comparisons made above to the Malibu Triathlon. And yet I still managed to wildly exceed my nonexistent expectations.

Swim

22 minutes 18 seconds

The swim was 1490 meters, according to the logs of my GPS watch. This includes a short run from the shore to the transition area, without any hills along the way. So that’s maybe more like 1450 meters of swimming, which is within 5% of the prescribed distance for an Olympic triathlon.

The swim was in a lake, and while last year it was two laps around the buoys, this year it was a single lap around an island out in the lake. It was a little funky swimming back, because I wasn’t sure how closely I should be hugging the shore, particularly around the small rocky point that jutted out into the lake. At one point my hand felt smooth rocks beneath me and I swam a few meters away from the shore to avoid them.

I was the fourth man out of the water, being in the first wave of under-40 males. There was no pack that far up in the front, and I never had to worry about bumping up against other swimmers, which undoubtedly helped my time.

While this is a little over a minute faster than my Malibu Triathlon time, it’s worth noting that the distance from the water to the transition area at the Malibu Triathlon was quite a bit longer, and it may have actually been a full 1500 meters of swimming. So this isn’t much of a change.

Bike

1 hour 8 minutes 27 seconds

This was a really fast course. Long, flat, smoothly paved straightaways for up to nearly a mile at a time with very light turns except for the two turnarounds, and pretty much no wind nor hills to worry about. I was eagerly watching my speed on my bike computer the whole time. I knew I had averaged about 32 km/h at the Malibu Triathlon, and it looked like I was going to keep a 34 km/h average speed here. I started doing some mental arithmetic while riding to estimate how much time that would shave off, arriving at something like 5 minutes, which excited me and motivated me to keep riding hard.

For the first of the three laps, I hardly encountered anyone else because there were still only four people ahead of me; someone must have passed me on the first transition, which is no surprise. On the second lap, there was some significant traffic to navigate, including kids, many riding side-by-side with one another and/or with their parents. It was enough to noticeably slow me down at times, and I got very loud with my calls of “On your left!” as I came up on any pack of riders numbering more than one.

At one point I knew there was another rider not too far behind me as I was navigating a pack in the first half of the second lap, and as soon as I got out into the clear, he shouted, “Let’s go!” I glanced over just enough to see the front of a tri bike pulling level, and I took that as a friendly invitation either to race down the stretch of free road ahead of us or just a reminder to bring my speed back up after breaking free from the other riders. I dug a little deeper, pushed hard until I didn’t feel him nipping at my heels, and when I looked down at my bike computer, I was holding 40 km/h. One more testament to the speed of this course.

In the end, I cut about 7 minutes from my Malibu Triathlon bike time. There are three significant caveats. First, the Malibu Triathlon was on PCH, which is paved with cars in mind, not bikes, and so is much rougher. Second, the Malibu Triathlon had three hills (or six if you double count for the return ride). Third, the Trick or Tri course, at 24.1 miles, according to the logs of my watch, was just over half a mile shorter than Malibu, which saves a little under two minutes at the speed I was holding.

Run

46 minutes 57 seconds

Running: Hello again, old frenemy.

I recently articulated my relationship with running as “antagonistic.” I hate running, but if I don’t do it, I feel like I’ve given up and running has won. So I do it even though/because it sucks. I’m determined to get better at it, and I have.

They say you should never try anything new on race day. But I did anyway, and decided I should try to see if I could negative split. I knew I could hold about 8:00/mile based on my time in the Malibu Triathlon, and could even drop that time with a small amount of added effort, at least for a while. I set out to hold around 8:10-8:20/mile for the first half and drop to something below 8:00/mile for the second half.

I managed to do that, but not quite as smoothly as I hoped. My mile splits were 8:09, 8:24, 8:07, 7:56, 8:13, 7:26 (with a qualifier for that last one being that it wasn’t quite a full mile, but that was my pace anyway). Those spikes in the second and fifth mile came from the gravel and dirt road in the middle third of the running loop, which I could feel slowing me down.

In the middle of the gravel portion on the first lap, I developed a sudden and pretty severe cramp on the right side of my abdomen. I’m no stranger to side-aches; they plagued me during my first triathlon and generally in my early training for running, but I haven’t had one in a while. I stopped for a few seconds to stretch a little bit, then kept running until the next water station, where I slowed down long enough to make sure I drank the whole cup of water, instead of drinking half and splashing the rest all over myself. The pause for proper hydration seemed to do the trick: the cramp went away and didn’t return.

I may have paced myself a bit to easily, because at the end of the race I still had a lot of juice left to run hard for the last couple hundred meters.

My time was about three minutes faster than my Malibu Triathlon time, with one significant caveat. Just like the bike leg, the run was 5.8 miles, compared to the Malibu 6.2 miles. My pace on Saturday was 8:04, and at Malibu it was 8:01, so I actually ran just a little bit slower.

Transitions

Total: 3 minutes 17 seconds (1:54 T1 / 1:23 T2)

I think this was where I made the biggest changes that were not related to the course differences. My total time in the Malibu Triathlon was 5:47. That time includes a much larger transition area—about 150 meters compared to maybe 50 meters at the Trick or Tri—but there were some other differences that I will take credit for.

The first was that I eschewed my gloves for this race. I realized about a month ago that gloves are much less necessary as long as I stay on the aero bars, which puts virtually all of the weight in your arms on your elbows instead of your hands, which instead serve to stabilize and steer the bike. I started riding without my gloves in training to see how it felt, and in the race I didn’t miss them at all. Skipping gloves seems small, but biking gloves are meant to be snug, and don’t always go on and off easily. When you’re tired and there’s adrenaline going, it can be even harder.

The second difference was visualization. I took a little bit of time the day before the race and while driving there in the morning to make a mental list of what I would need to, and in what order, at each transition. T1: drop cap and goggles; strip wetsuit; bike shoes; helmet and glasses; pull out bike, run out, hop on, ride. T2: rack bike; helmet off and leave glasses on; shoes off; running shoes on (which takes a few extra moments because they’re Five Finger shoes); run out.

The third difference was an addition to that routine: energy goo. (I think people call them “gels,” but I like “goo.”) I stashed one energy goo each in a bike shoe and a running show for each transition. I didn’t take the time to fully consume either one, just swallowing what was easiest to squeeze out without any pause for finer articulation of the packet. I also took a couple swigs of electrolyte-infused water from my second water bottle left on the ground. This may have also contributed to my cramp during the run, because hydrating with electrolyte water, especially when eating goo, is not the same as pure water.

Final Thoughts

Total Time: 2 hours 21 minutes 6 seconds

Overall, much my difference in total time from the Malibu Triathlon can be credited to the differences in the courses, but this is also a significant improvement over my time from last year (which, according to my Facebook post that morning, was 2:30:31), which is particularly notable given that they shorted the run by at least a kilometer.

Month over month, I’m not sure how much my better my performance really way compared to the Malibu Triathlon, but year over year, apples to apples, I crushed it. Like I said before, I would have been happy just to break 2:30, which was my stretch goal last year. I never expected to drop 14 minutes off Malibu and 9 minutes off the 2015 Trick or Tri.

This is also the first time I’ve ever placed in the top three for my age group, coming in third. First place in my age group was also the overall winner, so I don’t feel too bad about losing that spot. The prize for a podium finish was a pint glass with the race branding on it, but by the time it was my turn to receive my prize and take a picture, they were out of pint glasses and the first place winner had already left. Oh well. They said they’ll mail me my glass.

I’m signed up already for next year’s race. With the early bird special they had going on this weekend, I signed up for the “Half” distance, essentially an off-brand Half-Ironman: 1.2 miles swim, 56 miles bike, 13.1 miles run. I’ve been upping my running distances lately, and I think I’m ready to tackle a half-marathon at the end of a triathlon.

So I have one more race this year, coming up in two and a half weeks. Next year I have a Half to look forward to, and in 2018 I’d like to run the LA Marathon. Maybe that same year, or the next, I’ll tackle an Ironman. Then maybe I can rest.