Race Reports

RACE REPORT: Mountain Man Sprint Triathlon, part I

On Saturday, my family made the pilgrimage to Flagstaff, Arizona for my second run at the Mountain Man Sprint Triathlon. I had connected with a few TriFuel triathletes who were coming to the race, but unfortunately, didn’t recognize anyone. That’s the catch with these damn Internet avatars. I can never make a match to someone’s postage-stamp-size photo or their description of “I’ll be the guy with the blue bike.”

(Note: I just read GeekGirl’s race report and I missed her and her husband completely! Then again, I’m not sure I even know what she looks like other than the Valkyrie-like illustration of her from her blog. At least I didn’t see anyone with a sword on the course.)

The sprint course hugs Upper Lake Mary with a great view of the lake on one side and towering ponderosa pines on the other.

While the race director bills the event as the “toughest race you’ll ever love,” the sprint course is really not that challenging…geographically speaking. Everything is fairly flat. The real bear is the altitude. We’re talking about 6,800 feet of “Honey, have you seen my oxygen bottle?” jokes among athletes on the course.

Last year saw my most depressing personal results of the season. The swim, which is my strongest event, was crushed by the altitude. This year turned out to be no different.

THE BACKGROUND
Before I get to the nitty gritty of the race, perhaps it will help to put my results in context.

Allow me to describe the racing machine that is me. I have a fucked up aerobic engine. I can easily redline my heart rate at 190+ on a run…at an 8:30/mile pace. My regular 11:30/mile pace had me averaging around 180 bpm. There was no middle ground. Even a hint of a jog spiked me from 110 to 160 bpm in less than a minute.

I thought if I just kept training harder, I would eventually go faster and my HR would drop. After a year of training, nothing happened.

Then, I came across an article in the BioBuilde newsletter by Louis Vargas. Vargas, who is affiliated with six-time Ironman champ Mark Allen, also suffered from a high HR. His heart rate challenges hit me square between the eyes. Finally, someone who had the same issue as I do! That article, in turn, led me to Mark Allen where I read this prophetic statement: “You can either try to race with an engine the size of a lawnmower, or you can build your engine up with a good base so that you are racing with a huge-turbo charged jet engine.”

Looking back over my past season, I never stopped to build that base. I wasn’t even racing with a lawnmower engine. I had a model airplane engine under the hood.

I had overlooked all of that Zone 1 training that was given to me by Coach Steve Ilg. To stay in Zone 1, I would have to walk, not run. That just didn’t make sense at the time so I trained in Zone 1 based on perceived exertion…or 160 bpm. I was also trying to cram too many events in my schedule, going from sprint to Olympic to half-mary trail run to full-blown winter quadrathalon. I was so busy learning new skills that I had neglected my foundation.

After reaching this epiphany that I had to slow down…and I mean really, ego-killing slow down…I decided to let the chips fall where they may. If I had to walk to stay in my prescribed HR zone, so be it. And, a lot of walking I did over the past several weeks. My farthest run going into this race was 2.5 miles….and that took me 45 minutes to do so by keeping my HR under 138.

However, success was slowly coming my way. My HR began to drop. First, the swim just felt like it “opened up.” I don’t know how to describe it. Next came the bike HR. Where I had once redlined at 190, I was now achieving the same output and perceived effort at 180. The run was slowly coming along…slowly. More consistency in my training and speed work would have definitely improved those numbers as well.

THE PREP
Like I said, for the past 12 weeks I’ve been focusing on re-building my aerobic base. Well, make that eight weeks of training. The last four were lost due to school, vacation, work and general heat-related sloth. Are you ready for this sobering stat? Since May 25, I have put in a whopping total of 4.4 hours of cardiovascular training. That’s 4.4 hours comprised of swimming, biking and running. Well, scratch the bike. I didn’t get on El Lobo once.

I never realized my training volume was that pathetic until just now. Somehow I had deluded myself into thinking I only had two weeks of non-effort under my belt.

THE PLAN
OK…back to the plan for this race. With the average altitude of 6,800′ and my notoriously high HR, I was curious to see how this was going to play out. My race strategy was simple: There were no time goals. There were no pace goals. And there were no speed goals. My only objective was to stay under my aerobic cap of 179 bpm and see where that took me.

More this afternoon…

hak

Related posts:

1. RACE REPORT: Mountain Man Sprint Triathlon, part II Just a reminder: the Top Triathlon Transition Tip Competition ends...
2. Race Report: The Mountain Man I had started to write this race report before the...
3. RACE REPORT: Lake Las Vegas Triathlon Better late than never, let’s run a recap of the...
4. Race Report: Las Vegas Triathlon (early) Although the official results for my first-ever Olympic-distance triathlon will...
5. Race Report: Las Vegas Triathlon (final) I couldn’t have asked for better race conditions than what...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.