Tri-ing in the Holy Land

The ramblings of a struggling triathlete in Israel

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Location: Israel

I'm the mother of 3, a teacher and a couch potato turned triathlete.

Friday, October 06, 2006

Nike Caesaria Triathlon - 30 September 2006



Right from the start, I decided that this was going to be a workout and not a race. This was tough for me, because I tend to be competitive, but I was determined to stick with this decision, even if it meant coming in last.

My husband took me to the race and before we left, he told me he knew how to get to Caesaria. Well, he sort of knew. We had to wing it and we got there a bit later than planned -- I only got into the transition area 15 minutes before they closed it (my teammates had been there for an hour already and asked me where I'd been). I had a lot of trouble finding a spot on the stand and when I found one, it was in a really crowded row where it would be hard to maneuver in and out with my bike. However, since I wasn't actually "racing", I didn't mind too much.

Got myself set up quickly and went out for a quick warm up -- I ran about 2 km and then went for a very short swim because they made us get out of the water. The sea was much calmer than last year -- no rocks flying up on the beach with the waves. This was good. However, the "calmness" was somewhat deceiving.

I started the swim in the back, intentionally. I was afraid of someone hitting my hand and I didn't feel like being swum over. I went out slowly with long, easy strokes. It was actually a lot of fun and I couldn't help thinking how much I'd enjoy doing a longer distance where I could swim like this even though I was actually "racing". Towards the first buoy, though, the water got a bit choppy and I swallowed quite a bit. Yuck. I was happy to go around the buoy and start swimming without waves in my face.

The first buoy was orange and the second one was yellow. After turning I could see the yellow buoy and I could also see the people in front of me swimming towards it. It looked a bit close, but I didn't think much of it until I heard people yelling from the boat. I had no idea what they were saying until I got closer. We'd swum to the wrong yellow buoy. This must have been the turn-around buoy for one of the kids' races and it was actually smaller than the one we were supposed to swim around, but I couldn't see that until I got really close to it. So I swung myself around and saw that we'd missed the right buoy by quite a long distance and I had to once again swim with waves in my face to get there. I have no idea how much time I wasted, but it was a lot. However, I wasn't racing, so it didn't bother me all that much. It was my fault, in any case, for not taking a better look at the buoys before the race.

I finally finished the swim and ran up to the transition area. My number fell while I was putting it on, but I calmly (and slowly) bent down and picked it up, reminding myself that I wasn't in a rush. It was a very long run out of the transition area with the bike and much of it was over rocks (covered by a carpet, but very difficult to run over with the bike, nonetheless). I had trouble holding the bike because of my hand, so I had to hang on to it with both hands, which slowed me down quite a bit. As I was running (sort of), I heard one of my teammates who wasn't racing today yell something like, "What kind of transition is that? Faster!" I yelled up to him that today was a workout, not a race and kept going.

Suddenly, I heard someone scream, "Your bottle! You dropped your bottle!" I looked down and saw that my bottle was on my bike, so I figured they weren't talking to me, but then they screamed again and this time they said, "The little bottle!" They meant my gel flask (no word for that in Hebrew). I turned around and saw it a few meters back and since I really needed it (and because I couldn't leave it there), I carefully turned around, walked back, waited for people to run by with their bikes and picked it up. I held it in my left hand, figuring I'd put it on my bike after I got on.

Mounting my bike was a disaster. I've gotten into this very bad habit of swinging my leg over the front when I'm being lazy and it takes much longer to get on the bike that way. Generally, when I'm transitioning, I don't do that, but for some reason, I did today. And then I just couldn't seem to properly get on the bike. The father of one of the kids on the team was right next to me, cheering me on, and my feeble attempts to mount my bike left him with a rather amused look on his face. I explained to him that I wasn't in a rush to get anywhere today.

My time for the swim (750 meters) plus the transition was 22:44. Slow as this sounds (and is), it was actually almost four minutes faster than last year (but last year's swim was a complete disaster and it's kind of hard to compare).

Once on my bike, I realized that I had a problem. I was still holding the gel flask in my left hand and I have absolutely no coordination whatsoever in that hand, which made it impossible to attach it to my bike. I couldn't take both hands off the bike to switch it to my right hand (some people can ride with no hands -- I'm not one of them) and I wasn't sure what to do. Somehow, I managed to grab the handle bars while holding the gel flask and then to grab it with my right hand. Before sticking it back on the bike, I drank half of it.

I had a lot of fun on the bike. I was alone for most of the time and no women passed me -- just some men. That's probably because there weren't a whole lot of people left to pass me, or at least not people doing the sprint. I made sure to say good morning to all the policemen who were standing at various intersections and basically just enjoyed myself without pushing too hard. There was one nice downhill section on the way back that I managed to pick up some speed on and that was fun, but the rest of the time, I went at a nice, fairly comfortable pace. I wanted to make sure I'd be able to run afterwards. My hand did ok during the ride -- I tried to pick it up on the bumpier parts and even rested it on the aerobar at times.

The bike was over way too quickly and I dismounted much in the same way I'd mounted -- very ungracefully. This time it was the mother of that kid on the team who was cheering me on. My time for the bike (20 km or just under) was 43:23. This was more than four and a half minutes faster than last year on what I believe was the same course.

Another long run back into the transition area. Nothing fell off my bike this time. It took a while to get back over all those rocks, though, especially with my cycling shoes on, and I walked part of the way because I was afraid I'd slip. I quickly racked my bike, changed shoes, took off my helmet and turned my number around and I was off.

The run was slow. I went out very slowly, afraid of running out of steam. My breathing was relatively slow, but my legs felt like bricks (is that why they call transition practice a "brick"?). This, of course, was from lack of bricks over the last few months -- I haven't done much transition practice since my last race on June 30th. I really wanted to walk, but I kept going. Then I decided to give myself a break -- I decided to walk through the water stations. There were four water stations (well, the same one four times) on the 5 km run. I walked through every time and kept walking until I'd finished drinking. But that's the only walking I did. The rest of the time, I ran slowly -- slow enough to talk to spectators and other athletes. With about 200 meters to go, I looked at a teammate's wife who was cheering for me and said, "Ok, now I'm going to sprint" and that's what I did. I can't seem to finish a race without sprinting (assuming I've got a sprint left in me, which after doing such an easy race today, I did). Before I knew it, it was over.

I had no idea what my time was, because I had intentionally not used my stopwatch. I did glance at the clock after crossing the finish line and saw 1:48, but I assumed (correctly) that it was set for the 39 and under sprint, which started five minutes before us. Once the results were posted, I went over to have a look. I had finished in 1:43:14. When I saw my run time, I didn't know whether to laugh or to cry. My 5 km run (including the transition, which took me quite a while because I had to run over those rocks) was 37:06. This is a very very slow 5k time for me, even at the end of a triathlon. However, it was actually 30 seconds faster than last year's time. Go figure.

Those of you who have been following have probably picked up on the fact that despite treating this race as a workout and not pushing myself very hard, apart from the last 200 meters, my time was actually almost nine minutes faster than last year. And I enjoyed the race much more than last year. In fact, I had a really good time and I'm actually looking forward to doing this race again next year.

A few things I learned from this "training session":

1) I need to pay more attention to the buoys on the swim course before I actually start swimming. They only come in so many colors and there may be more than one of the same color on the course -- I need to be sure to swim to the right one.

2) I need to make sure my gel flask is properly attached to my bike. If I had double checked it before the race, it wouldn't have fallen off.

3) I have to start getting on my bike the right way all the time. What I'm used to doing in practice is what I'm going to do in a race, so I need to stop being lazy in practice.

4) If you don't do bricks regularly, your legs forget how to run after cycling. As out of shape as I might be, my aerobic capacity was far greater today than the ability to properly use the muscles in my legs to run. It's been a long time since I last had trouble running in a race after getting off my bike. I'm actually glad it happened today, because it reminded me that bricks are a very important part of training and that I have to take them more seriously.

5) It's almost time to move up to Olympic distance. Being able to "tone things down" a bit was so much more enjoyable than having to worry about losing a precious second here and there. I haven't done a workout of more than an hour or so for almost two months, yet I had absolutely no problem moving for almost two hours. The only part that was a little bit difficult was the run, but even there, I could have done twice as much -- my legs normally start feeling better after a few kilometers. I definitely would have had no problem swimming another 750 meters (or less -- I have no idea how far I swam, but it was more than 750 meters!) and riding another 20 km, even in the shape I'm in now.

That's it. Now I've got till the end of the month to get ready for Eilat, where I plan to race, not just do a workout. I know I still won't be at my best, but I also know that I'll do fine and no matter what I do, I'll PR because I DNFed last year and did the super sprint the year before.

What a fun day.

2 Comments:

Blogger Vickie said...

Great pics! Great report too. I have to always remember to look at my e-mails when I get to the office because I can't open attachments or links from home for some odd reason.

6/10/06 20:23  
Blogger Ellie Hamilton said...

I liked the "things you learned" list. I might start posting one of those to each of my race reports. We always learn something.... from our own experiences and from others'. Thanks!

6/10/06 22:33  

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