Race Report: USAT Age Group National Championship
This past Saturday I participated in the USA Triathlon Age Group National Championships held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The Nationals have two races, the Olympic Distance and the Sprint Distance held on consecutive days. To race in the Olympic distance race, one has to qualify by meeting criteria. Basically, if you win your age group or finish in the top 10% (for larger races) of any sanctioned race, you get an invitation. For the sprint, you do not have to qualify. At both races, a good number of Team USA slots are available to ITU Worlds for the Olympic and Sprint races held at various other places around the world.
I went into this knowing full well I was not vying for a Team USA spot. My goal was to do this as a tune up during my Ironman training and to have fun. A friend of mine from Plymouth, Massachusetts also was going and we spent the weekend together so it was half racing and half social. In all honesty, I went for Spotted Cow. For those who don't know, Spotted Cow is a beer brewed by New Glarus Brewing and is only sold in Wisconsin. I got hooked on Wisconsin beer during business trips last year to Madison.
Race Week:
I did not spend too much time tuning up for this race week as I would another event. I had to drop my bike off for TriBike Transport about a week early but since I have a road bike, it was ok. TBT was easy to use and all I needed to do was drop my bike off at my local bike shop by the deadline. I would pick it up the day before the race near transition, all put together and ready to go. It saves so much effort in trying to lug that stuff through the airport. I saw numerous people dragging their bike cases through the airports and I just didn't want to deal with that.
I flew from Orlando because the flights were more plentiful and I could drop my dog off at Disney pet care. Yes, Disney has onsite boarding and my dog goes to Disney "puppy camp" when I am away. Don't judge. His name is Flynn Rider after all. And if you don't know who that is you don't watch enough Disney movies. Go watch Tangled. Seriously, go watch it now. Then come back to this blog.
Good movie, right? My flight up was full of people going to Nationals. I arrived and took a very expensive taxi to the hotel. I probably should have used Uber but I don't know if that service works in Wisconsin. I met Lauren, who I have not seen since our race one year prior, and we headed off to packet pickup. Wouldn't you know it started to rain. Actually, it poured for about two hours while we slogged over to pick up packets and rack our bikes. So much for a dry bike. My race number was 26, which is pretty low and I felt important. Even though they assigned it by waves and I was in wave 1 by virtue of my age, I still felt like a pro for a minute. Then I saw everyone else's bikes. Yeah, this was the national championships.
Race Day
Since the bike was racked the day before, all I had to do was set up transition. The hotel was less than a mile from the start so it did not take long. We left the hotel a little later since Lauren would not start until 9:55am and we didn't want to have excess waiting. I was ok with the extra sleep since I could set up and just go right into my wave. I was set up by 6:20 and had lots of standing around time. I ate some of my pre-race food and calmed my nerves. I was not nervous really about the race but the cold water. I bid farewell to friends and off to the dock I went.
Swim (33:13)
The water was cold. There was no getting around it. It was cold. Race morning water temp was 65 degrees. I'm sorry, 65.4 degrees was announced. I am very glad I had my full sleeve wetsuit. Considering all of my swims this year have either been in an 85 degree pool or 87 degree Gulf (90 officially two weeks ago), the water felt very cold. Fortunately we were able to get in 10 minutes before the start of our wave and float/swim/flail around to get use to it. The start was deep water (about 15 feet) but instead of treading water, they made everyone put at least on hand up on a floating dock and hold on. This was very annoying as my arms were getting tired after four to five minutes of doing a pull-up to keep myself stable. I'm not sure the reasoning for this as last year it looked like a tread-water start from the race video. It wasn't a option either as officials were making sure everyone had a least one hand on the dock before the start.
The swim course was lollipop-ish and an odd shape. You swam under a bridge and then did a loop of the second harbor. It wasn't square or triangular but some weird polygon shape. Nevertheless, the sky was clear and the water was actually pretty clear for lake water as I could see probably four to five feet in front of me including the feet of the person ahead of me. It wasn't murky or nasty tasting like some of the freshwater swims I have done in the past.
I took it easy on the swim just getting used to the water. After a few hundred meters, I was going pretty well. I had some trouble sighting the weird course as there were no sighting buoys between the yellow triangular turn buoys. Abut halfway through the course, the first of the 30-34 females began to pass me. I was pretty far back in the age group and I swam a little wide for the remainder to get out of their way. I was not competing and I was not going to try to draft on their feet, so I just made sure I didn't collide with anyone and made my way back to the swim exit. My time wasn't bad at all for me even thought I got blasted by everyone in my age group. The steep exit ramp was awful to use and it was slippery and covered with algae.
T1 (3:42)
Transition was a little run up from the swim. Because they assigned numbers and racks by wave, I was right next to the swim in. Since there were only three bikes in our rack left, it was pretty easy to get through transition.
Bike (1:21:12)
The bike course was a pretty simple out and back. You started North along the lakefront, turned around then proceeded south past transition and kept going on the road. You proceeded south on a pretty straight shot, went over a freeway bridge, turned onto another road and basically ended up near the airport. Then you turned around and went back. It was a very simple set up.
The first part of the course was ok and had a small hill right before the turn around. I was able to cruise pretty well for this part. The second part of the course went over a freeway bridge that was under construction and the quality of the roads diminished significantly. The bridge had expansion joists every so many feet that felt like speed bumps each time you hit them. I thought for sure I was going to have a pinch flat, especially going down the side of the bridge at speed. (Note: I did meet an athlete later that night that did crash on one of the joists head first. He was ok but my fears were validated that those were pretty nasty). The roads near the airport were also pretty chewed up with bumps.
The most significant issue was the wind. Once we got on the bridge and thereafter, it was incredibly windy. It seemed to be a crosswind so it did not do much advantage either way. It was significantly slowing me down. It felt like being back on the Atlantic City expressway last year. It is mentally unnerving to be pounding as hard as you can and look to see 12 mph on your computer. Still others were passing me so I wasn't all the wind.
It was painfully obvious that my bike is my weak point and where I can gain the most. I had hundreds of people pass me in all ages including some of the 70 year old groups. I did pass back two or three people at the end but had the slowest bike split in my age group. For me it was an average ride around 18.5 miles per hour but here that was not even close to being enough.
T2 (1:45)
T2 was uneventful. I changed shoes and threw on a hat.
Run (51:12)
Coming off of the bike, I actually felt good running. I settled in to my comfortable run pace and just let things play out.
About a half mile into the run, I began to pass people. Granted these were all people that had passed me on the bike but it did feel good to see the ages (so I knew how far behind me they originally started) as I picked people off. Around mile 3, I passed the first person in my age group. That was a good feeling as I was certain I was going to be last overall. I felt good and took no walk breaks whatsoever.
At the last mile, I spotted another person in my age group and passed them. He sped up and tried to pass back. He commented jokingly that he couldn't let me beat him. In a little friendly competition, I looked back and said "try me" as I kicked and sped off. In the last few hundred yards, I spotted a gentleman in the 70-75 age group and put in my final kick not to be beat by someone older than my father. I finished a few seconds ahead of him. Little victories here. I do have to realize that these aren't just triathletes, these are national champions in their age groups, some of whom have been racing for 20 or more years. Not your typical retiree.
The aid stations on the run were woefully understaffed. They had two or three volunteers at each station. At the first (and second since it was the same station), they had three volunteers who were very apologetic as they could not even fill the cups fast enough to get the water out to the athletes. This was very disappointing for a national championship race. There were also no port-o-lets on the run course whatsoever. Not even one at one of the aid stations. If you had to go or had an emergency, there was nothing to do but just go. And you could not pee in the park since there were spectators and it was a very open run course. This was also concerning. I realize it isn't a Ironman distance but still at least one would have been safe for an emergency.
Overall (2:51:05)
This was a four minute PR on my Olympic distance race (I've only done two previous at this exact distance) but still only good enough here for fifth to last in my age group. Racing with the class of athletes there was a humbling but exciting experience. It shows me exactly where I need to improve and where I need to go to be truly competitive.
The major lesson from this race was that I need to work on my bike. Even my swim was not terrible. Let's be honest and say that five or six minutes on the swim can easily be made back up with a good bike and run so I am not worried about exerting loads of training time and effort on improving swim time. I just need to get myself into the saddle and work through the bike.
The race itself was not that special. I found that for a national championship, the post race food was nearly nonexistent. The jackets that we got were poorly screen printed and Lauren's had already peeled off the night after. I mean the comparisons that we have are to Challenge and Ironman events so in that respect it was nothing near the caliber of those events in terms of organization. Then again, USA Triathlon isn't in the business of producing events like some of the larger race companies. They aren't a race company, they are a governing body.
Next year, USA Triathlon decided to move the Age Group Nationals to Omaha, Nebraska. Whether I go or not, is yet to be seen but Omaha in August is not that appealing. I had a dream they moved it to Fort Lauderdale and thought how crazy that was in summer. Then they announced Omaha.
I went into this knowing full well I was not vying for a Team USA spot. My goal was to do this as a tune up during my Ironman training and to have fun. A friend of mine from Plymouth, Massachusetts also was going and we spent the weekend together so it was half racing and half social. In all honesty, I went for Spotted Cow. For those who don't know, Spotted Cow is a beer brewed by New Glarus Brewing and is only sold in Wisconsin. I got hooked on Wisconsin beer during business trips last year to Madison.
Race Week:
I did not spend too much time tuning up for this race week as I would another event. I had to drop my bike off for TriBike Transport about a week early but since I have a road bike, it was ok. TBT was easy to use and all I needed to do was drop my bike off at my local bike shop by the deadline. I would pick it up the day before the race near transition, all put together and ready to go. It saves so much effort in trying to lug that stuff through the airport. I saw numerous people dragging their bike cases through the airports and I just didn't want to deal with that.
I flew from Orlando because the flights were more plentiful and I could drop my dog off at Disney pet care. Yes, Disney has onsite boarding and my dog goes to Disney "puppy camp" when I am away. Don't judge. His name is Flynn Rider after all. And if you don't know who that is you don't watch enough Disney movies. Go watch Tangled. Seriously, go watch it now. Then come back to this blog.
Good movie, right? My flight up was full of people going to Nationals. I arrived and took a very expensive taxi to the hotel. I probably should have used Uber but I don't know if that service works in Wisconsin. I met Lauren, who I have not seen since our race one year prior, and we headed off to packet pickup. Wouldn't you know it started to rain. Actually, it poured for about two hours while we slogged over to pick up packets and rack our bikes. So much for a dry bike. My race number was 26, which is pretty low and I felt important. Even though they assigned it by waves and I was in wave 1 by virtue of my age, I still felt like a pro for a minute. Then I saw everyone else's bikes. Yeah, this was the national championships.
Race Day
Since the bike was racked the day before, all I had to do was set up transition. The hotel was less than a mile from the start so it did not take long. We left the hotel a little later since Lauren would not start until 9:55am and we didn't want to have excess waiting. I was ok with the extra sleep since I could set up and just go right into my wave. I was set up by 6:20 and had lots of standing around time. I ate some of my pre-race food and calmed my nerves. I was not nervous really about the race but the cold water. I bid farewell to friends and off to the dock I went.
Swim (33:13)
The water was cold. There was no getting around it. It was cold. Race morning water temp was 65 degrees. I'm sorry, 65.4 degrees was announced. I am very glad I had my full sleeve wetsuit. Considering all of my swims this year have either been in an 85 degree pool or 87 degree Gulf (90 officially two weeks ago), the water felt very cold. Fortunately we were able to get in 10 minutes before the start of our wave and float/swim/flail around to get use to it. The start was deep water (about 15 feet) but instead of treading water, they made everyone put at least on hand up on a floating dock and hold on. This was very annoying as my arms were getting tired after four to five minutes of doing a pull-up to keep myself stable. I'm not sure the reasoning for this as last year it looked like a tread-water start from the race video. It wasn't a option either as officials were making sure everyone had a least one hand on the dock before the start.
The swim course was lollipop-ish and an odd shape. You swam under a bridge and then did a loop of the second harbor. It wasn't square or triangular but some weird polygon shape. Nevertheless, the sky was clear and the water was actually pretty clear for lake water as I could see probably four to five feet in front of me including the feet of the person ahead of me. It wasn't murky or nasty tasting like some of the freshwater swims I have done in the past.
I took it easy on the swim just getting used to the water. After a few hundred meters, I was going pretty well. I had some trouble sighting the weird course as there were no sighting buoys between the yellow triangular turn buoys. Abut halfway through the course, the first of the 30-34 females began to pass me. I was pretty far back in the age group and I swam a little wide for the remainder to get out of their way. I was not competing and I was not going to try to draft on their feet, so I just made sure I didn't collide with anyone and made my way back to the swim exit. My time wasn't bad at all for me even thought I got blasted by everyone in my age group. The steep exit ramp was awful to use and it was slippery and covered with algae.
T1 (3:42)
Transition was a little run up from the swim. Because they assigned numbers and racks by wave, I was right next to the swim in. Since there were only three bikes in our rack left, it was pretty easy to get through transition.
Bike (1:21:12)
The bike course was a pretty simple out and back. You started North along the lakefront, turned around then proceeded south past transition and kept going on the road. You proceeded south on a pretty straight shot, went over a freeway bridge, turned onto another road and basically ended up near the airport. Then you turned around and went back. It was a very simple set up.
The first part of the course was ok and had a small hill right before the turn around. I was able to cruise pretty well for this part. The second part of the course went over a freeway bridge that was under construction and the quality of the roads diminished significantly. The bridge had expansion joists every so many feet that felt like speed bumps each time you hit them. I thought for sure I was going to have a pinch flat, especially going down the side of the bridge at speed. (Note: I did meet an athlete later that night that did crash on one of the joists head first. He was ok but my fears were validated that those were pretty nasty). The roads near the airport were also pretty chewed up with bumps.
The most significant issue was the wind. Once we got on the bridge and thereafter, it was incredibly windy. It seemed to be a crosswind so it did not do much advantage either way. It was significantly slowing me down. It felt like being back on the Atlantic City expressway last year. It is mentally unnerving to be pounding as hard as you can and look to see 12 mph on your computer. Still others were passing me so I wasn't all the wind.
It was painfully obvious that my bike is my weak point and where I can gain the most. I had hundreds of people pass me in all ages including some of the 70 year old groups. I did pass back two or three people at the end but had the slowest bike split in my age group. For me it was an average ride around 18.5 miles per hour but here that was not even close to being enough.
T2 (1:45)
T2 was uneventful. I changed shoes and threw on a hat.
Run (51:12)
Coming off of the bike, I actually felt good running. I settled in to my comfortable run pace and just let things play out.
About a half mile into the run, I began to pass people. Granted these were all people that had passed me on the bike but it did feel good to see the ages (so I knew how far behind me they originally started) as I picked people off. Around mile 3, I passed the first person in my age group. That was a good feeling as I was certain I was going to be last overall. I felt good and took no walk breaks whatsoever.
At the last mile, I spotted another person in my age group and passed them. He sped up and tried to pass back. He commented jokingly that he couldn't let me beat him. In a little friendly competition, I looked back and said "try me" as I kicked and sped off. In the last few hundred yards, I spotted a gentleman in the 70-75 age group and put in my final kick not to be beat by someone older than my father. I finished a few seconds ahead of him. Little victories here. I do have to realize that these aren't just triathletes, these are national champions in their age groups, some of whom have been racing for 20 or more years. Not your typical retiree.
The aid stations on the run were woefully understaffed. They had two or three volunteers at each station. At the first (and second since it was the same station), they had three volunteers who were very apologetic as they could not even fill the cups fast enough to get the water out to the athletes. This was very disappointing for a national championship race. There were also no port-o-lets on the run course whatsoever. Not even one at one of the aid stations. If you had to go or had an emergency, there was nothing to do but just go. And you could not pee in the park since there were spectators and it was a very open run course. This was also concerning. I realize it isn't a Ironman distance but still at least one would have been safe for an emergency.
Overall (2:51:05)
This was a four minute PR on my Olympic distance race (I've only done two previous at this exact distance) but still only good enough here for fifth to last in my age group. Racing with the class of athletes there was a humbling but exciting experience. It shows me exactly where I need to improve and where I need to go to be truly competitive.
The major lesson from this race was that I need to work on my bike. Even my swim was not terrible. Let's be honest and say that five or six minutes on the swim can easily be made back up with a good bike and run so I am not worried about exerting loads of training time and effort on improving swim time. I just need to get myself into the saddle and work through the bike.
The race itself was not that special. I found that for a national championship, the post race food was nearly nonexistent. The jackets that we got were poorly screen printed and Lauren's had already peeled off the night after. I mean the comparisons that we have are to Challenge and Ironman events so in that respect it was nothing near the caliber of those events in terms of organization. Then again, USA Triathlon isn't in the business of producing events like some of the larger race companies. They aren't a race company, they are a governing body.
Next year, USA Triathlon decided to move the Age Group Nationals to Omaha, Nebraska. Whether I go or not, is yet to be seen but Omaha in August is not that appealing. I had a dream they moved it to Fort Lauderdale and thought how crazy that was in summer. Then they announced Omaha.
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