Since I’ve arrived in Japan there hasn’t been much going on. I sleep a lot. I eat when I should. I train as much as I need to. The rest of the time I’ve just been sitting around, chatting with people, refreshing my inbox to see if the ITU has finally made their decision of whether or not to hold the Yokohama World Championship race in four weeks, or if USA Triathlon has decided yet if they’ll be sending me to the Monterrey World Cup in just three. It’s low stress to the extreme, which is a really nice change of pace from filling out insurance claims, maxing out credit cards, and the other chores of post-theft reestablishment of stuff.

My favorite part of being in Ishigaki is definitely the cycling. The people are quite friendly, and the traffic is light. The roads are pristine and the scenery is endlessly engrossing. My first ride on Wednesday reminded me that I had intended to stay an extra day this year so that I could be a tourist. I’ve been about a third of the way around the island, and I really want to see the rest of it, but I let my budget decide my return date so the tourism will have to wait until next year.

There has been a bit of translational humor, which can almost be expected in a place like Japan where the alphabet and language is so different from English. Like when Steve Sexton and I asked the front desk where we could find a simple meal for relatively little cash they handed us their “English” map of the town and pointed to a place called “Banira Deri”. I told Steve that it was probably a deli (with an ‘L’), which he laughed at and I expected to be true. Unfortunately, most of the landmarks on the English map did not have English signs, so it was hard to identify whether places like “Banana Café” we were supposed to pass were really there. When we did arrive to the street where the “Banira Deri” was supposed to be we found two restaurants – both looked appealing – but neither with the sign we were looking for. The first one had a sign in English, but since it didn’t match our map we assumed it was the second store. It was after browsing both menus that I looked up at the first sign and realized that “Banira Deri” was a double translation of “Vanilla Deli” (first to Japanese characters, then back to English). The food was great.

We swim in a 50m pool at the Ishigaki Sports complex, which also boasts a huge gym, a baseball field and a track and field center. The only thing missing is a velodrome. This is where I did all of my swimming the past few days and most of my running. I’m sure there are plenty of dirt paths on this island, but I haven’t found them, so I just lingered around the track to enjoy the grass and soft surface.

Aside from the food – which has been low protein, high-carb with a very un-western palate – and the training, I’ve been a pretty lame tourist. I figured out how to watch Netflix’s live stream by using a proxy server back home (it won’t stream to IPs outside the US), which has provided some entertainment. I haven’t figured out how to get USAT’s Normatec to work without the voltage converter (they bought a 220 volt Norma, so places like Japan and the United States require us to use a voltage converter to step it up from 110 volts) that was left at home thinking it wouldn’t be needed in Australia last week.

As far as the race goes, I’m excited. We came a long way for this, so I’m not leaving anything on the course. Besides, I have some pent up energy from my anticlimactic participatory experience last weekend at South Beach. I’ll take luck, but all I really need to do (in the crass words of Rory) is “not [mess] up.”

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The trip from Miami to Ishigaki was long, and not without its memorable moments. First, while checking in with United in Miami, I had airport security called to escort me away from the check-in counter. Having not raised my voice, and been guilty only of politely asking to have my bags checked through to Ishigaki (to avoid reclaiming in Tokyo) I stood my ground, called the ticket counter guy’s bluff and never saw security (“wait, you’re going to call security on a customer who flew 75,000 miles with your airline last year because I’m inconveniencing you to check my bags through to my final destination?”). Next, in LA I switched from United to ANA for my flight to Tokyo, and was really excited when I was paged to the counter, thinking that I was being upgraded to business class. Wrong, they were calling me up to inform me that United had delivered my luggage to them open and that they had taped it closed. They just wanted me to know that it was United and not ANA who would be responsible for anything missing. That meant I had a twelve-hour flight to Tokyo, and another two flights and seven hours to Ishigaki before I would know whether my bike was completely with me. Luckily, the gods of seat selection were with me throughout the trip, so on the five flights I was seated in an exit row (Miami to Denver – I watched Tron Legacy, which was not very good), first class (Denver to LA), a row of three to myself (for 12 hours from LA to Tokyo – the flight was less than a third full so everyone had a row to lay down in), business class with fully reclining seats (Tokyo to Okinawa – they upgraded the plane from a 767 to a 777 then apologized that they needed to move people from their previously assigned seats – the upgrade didn’t come with service, but the extra 3 hour nap was nice), and then an aisle seat with nobody next to me for the final 40 minute segment into Ishigaki – where I found my bike case fully intact with everything inside it – feeewwww!! In total it took me 31 hours from hugging my mom goodbye at the Miami airport to stepping into the Hotel Lobby in Ishigaki. I slept for at least 14 of hours of that time.

Well, that was definitely not what I had hoped for. I showed up at this year’s Nautica South Beach Triathlon thinking I was there to race, but discovered at the beginning of the bike that I was purely there for participation.

After a very pleasant swim in Cameron Dye’s draft I ran through transition to my bike, dropped it, picked it up and ran to the mount line, dropped a shoe (first time in my career), picked it up, finally started riding, but rather slowly. Brian Fleischmann caught as I was starting to ride, but I couldn’t hang with him even for a minute. My legs ached with the effort to stay in contact with the guys that kept coming by me. It made no sense. I started cursing my new bike, then cursing myself, thinking I must have done something stupid during the week to make my body weak. I released the rear brake, but it made no difference. I looked at the front brake but thought for sure I could see space between the pads and the rim. Eventually even the slowest swimmers passed me, and at the turnaround my gap to the leaders had grown to almost 3 minutes. I wasn’t really sure what to do, I mean, there’s a world cup coming up in a week, so killing myself for a poor place is a bad idea, dropping out is shameful without a legitimate health risk, but clearly something must have been wrong with me? I’ve never been dropped like that on the bike. I just kept riding as hard as I could, but when Sarah Haskins caught me, I started getting the feeling that coming back to Miami after my previous experience (bike and gear being stolen) was like a degenerate gambler frequenting Vegas.

Starting the run I dallied a short time to wait for Sarah to catch up, then decided her pace was probably good enough to call it a tempo run in preparation for the Ishigaki World Cup. It was fun running with her, but I started getting the feeling that I was in her way. I wasn’t really thinking about my own race anymore, so I was giving verbal encouragement to her. She kept talking back to me, asking about which side of the course to be on, whether we were supposed to take the shortest line or go around the cones, why there were so many people walking in front of us… that sort of thing. It didn’t seem like a very good idea to have Sarah talking, and I would have felt terrible if she ran slower because of it, so I picked up the pace and ran on my own for the last four miles. At the turnaround I saw that Cam had about a minute on Potts, who had a good lead over the rest of the field. A tinge of jealousy hit me as I wondered why I wasn’t with them this time, but it was far too late to fix anything. My mind was already focused on how I could best prepare for my travel to Japan.

I have no idea where I finished. And I got out of there as quickly as possible. I wanted to check out my bike and find out if the problem was me or something mechanical with the bike. I spun the back wheel hoping that it would be stuck. No. It spun easily with the free-hub clicking away on my 404 (I must have been the only person without a disc wheel in the pro field). Disappointed I tried to spin the front wheel. It wouldn’t budge. It was stuck like a fly in honey. It was a relief to know it wasn’t my fitness, but extremely frustrating to know that I screwed up a race with something completely preventable. I guess that’s what I get for using completely new equipment for a race. This won’t happen again.

Well, the post-race stress has been slightly alleviated this week. I just got two new bikes from BH to replace the road bike I cracked at World Championships last year and the time trial bike that was stolen the day after Miami International three weeks ago. I’m finally calm enough to write a proper race report for the Miami International Triathlon, which is timely since I’m back in Miami now for another race.

The Miami International Triathlon was first race in the World Triathlon Corporation’s new 5150 race series. The series was oddly named 5150 because an Olympic distance triathlon is 5,150 decameters total (150 decameter swim, 4000 decameter bike, and 1000 decameter run) – why a more conventional unit was not used the world may never know. The important thing to know about the series is that the finale is Des Moines’ Hy-Vee Triathlon with a total prize purse of over 1 million dollars. This price tag at the finish line attracts much more talent to the qualifying races than a modest $25,000 prize purse normally would. Smart WTC, very smart.

Well, onto the race report, I’ve delayed enough.

The race started in Downtown Miami right at dawn. The swim started fast with Eric Limkemann immediately breaking away from the other strong swimmers (Cam Dye, Kyle Leto, Brian Fleishmann, and myself). Unfortunately, Eric made the mistake of following the lead kayak and went off course toward the end, allowing the rest of us to retake the lead. Out of the water was a long string of guys, but I didn’t turn around to see who was present. Matt Chrabot and one other guy ran by me about half way through the 5 decameter run to our bikes (for some reason we had to run the long way around this big fountain which added about two decameters to the first transition). I must have been the only one who wasn’t wearing a swim skin, however, because I passed everyone in front of me in T1 as they were undressing.

Eric mounted his bike right next to me, but as soon as I got my feet in the shoes I took off at my own pace. It was about 500 or 600 decameters into the bike ride that Cam Dye and Kyle Leto came by me. It was a relief, it’s much easier to pace with other people around, and I know from experience that Cam sets a pace that’s pretty much perfect for me. I took over the lead again whenever I was able (there’s a balance between mental toughness of setting the pace and the stress of having to be alert enough to keep switching sides of the road for the stagger rule). At the first turn around in Miami Beach (1000 decameters) I found myself with a rather large group including Bevan Docherty, Matt Chrabot, Cam, Kyle, and maybe one or two others. Kyle must have seen the same thing because he started pushing the pace really hard. By 20km in he was a solid 40 seconds up the road from us, and Cam and I had stretched out the pack to legitimate non-drafting spacing (USA Triathlon’s stagger rule basically allows for drafting when enough people are riding close together).

Kyle blew a fuse around the 2000 decameter mark (I later found out that his only bottle fell off on a pot-hole) and came back to Cam and I. Then at about 3700 decameters Chris Lieto caught up to Cam, Kyle and myself and took over the lead of the race. I let Cam and Chris fly into T2 together as I prepped my legs for the run. I had been cramping all morning and was a little worried about the run. Kyle and I cruised in together about 15 seconds back from Chris and Cameron. I threw on my K-Swiss and a visor then darted off after them. The only hitch in my T2 was my makeshift number belt. I had forgotten my nice stretchy Blue Seventy number belt, and had crafted one from the drawstring of a pair of running shorts and two paper clips. This worked like a charm while I was getting ready the night before, but was not so good in the heat of T2. I fumbled for a bit trying to clasp the paper clips together before I was able to put my nose forward and charge after the two C’s.

I was right about my legs on the run. They felt awful for the first mile or so, though they never really feel “great” after a hard ride. I stayed even spaced behind Chris and Cam until the first turn around at about 75 decameters. That’s where I saw Chrabot and Bevan charging like madmen and realized I didn’t have time to “get into” the run, I had to just go. I caught Cam and Chris 160 decameters into the run, and stayed with them for a while, changing leaders and using each other to draft. At the second turn around, a little under 300 decameters in there was a coning blunder and a course volunteer was yelling at us to be somewhere other than where we were. Chrabot was running the other way and we both repositioned to the same spot, then collided chest to chest at a combined velocity of about 4000 decameters per hour. It hurt, but we both went right back to running. Soon after that I took over the lead and held it from about 300 decameters until just past the 500 decameter mark. That’s when Chrabot came by me. I tried to match his cadence and my legs revolted with another cramp. Oh well, I was pretty sure I could push the pace a little harder and hang onto second.

At the last turnaround, with about 150 decameters to go I saw Bevan charging past Chris and Cam and closing in quickly. I thought I had enough to hold him off and I focused on running as fast as I could. Unfortunately, I hit a solid wall at 50 decameters to go and Bevan was in the perfect position to take advantage of it. I couldn’t match the pace he came by me with, so I looked behind me for the first time during the race, saw I had a decent amount of real estate and held my pace through the finish chute for a third place finish.

Cam was close behind me, with Chris even closer behind him. It was a tough race with a very strong field. A podium here is definitely something of which to be proud. I made a few mistakes, but I’ll be able to fix those easily (more salt, less jerry rigging). A thanks goes out to Miami for hosting a great race, and treating me like family. But not the people who stole my bike the next day. Jerks.

UPDATE: I added a graph for the race. It’s nice to have a visual of how things ended up in the top 10, and it’s much easier to read a non-drafting race graph than an ITU graph. Again, the Zero line is Matt Charbot, below the zero line represents a lead over Matt at that timing point, above the zero line represents a deficit to Matt.