I’ve been racing pretty well so far this spring, so I decided to throw my name into a few ITU Pan-American Cup races in June. My world ranking in the ITU has plummeted this year, due mainly to a lack of ITU racing on my part, from 60 to 110. It turns out you can’t hold a ranking if you don’t race, and without a high enough ranking you can’t get into big races, no matter how many people think you should be there. So I flew south to Colombia (when it’s spelled with two ‘O’s it refers to the country, rather than the school, town, or production studio) for back-to-back Pan-American Cup races. Looking at the start lists for these races is quite a bit less intimidating than a race like Saint Anthony’s or a World Cup, but there are enough people in the ranking battle that neither race is without some solid talent.

The first race was in Cartagena, a coastal port city with a wall around the inner city. The bike course went around and through a fort and through a section of the city that looked very similar to the French Quarter of New Orleans. It was a cool course and previewing it the day before the race I was really excited for a bike course that offered more than an out and back on crummy roads. The only daunting problem was the heat. I haven’t done any real specific heat training this year. I had decided at the beginning of the year to avoid races with extreme heat and focus on courses that suit me well. It wasn’t until the day before the race that I realized this would be one of the hottest races I’ve ever taken part in. The temperature was around 90 degrees, but the humidity of 70% raised the heat index to 112. Coming from 10% humidity in Colorado, my body was in shock. The water temperature didn’t help either. On Saturday I ran 3km to the race from my hotel so I could preview the swim course. By the time I got there I was drenched in sweat and downing every water source in sight. The ocean, to my surprise, was so warm that I could barely manage a 20-minute loosen-up, and I needed a few bags of water before I was ready to jog home. Still, I figured that with good fitness I would be able to manage the heat just as well as anyone else when it came to the race.

Race day was even hotter. When I stepped out of my air-conditioned hotel room it was like walking into an oven. I brought an extra bottle of ice water to drizzle over my head while I set up for the race. Before the start another athlete came to me and said, “good luck, but I don’t know that we can call this a race. It’s going to be survival.” The swim was so warm that I was content to sit in the pack and follow feet. When I started the bike I was already so hot that I skipped pulls in an attempt to regain composure. By the time the bike was half way over I had goose bumps on my legs. I had planned to attack with another athlete, but each lap we found each other and said, “Maybe next lap”. The pack rode just fast enough that nobody wanted to go it alone, but so slow that nobody was really “pulling”. With a half lap to go I finally decided to go for it. I got 25 seconds into T2, but 1km into the run I was gassed. My HR was at max, my pace was slowing rapidly, and I could barely breath the thick air. I turned my thoughts to the next aide station and focused on staying cool, too stubborn to walk, let alone drop out. I ran the slowest 10km run of my career in 39 minutes, and then collapsed into the care of two Colombian nurses who poured ice water over me and kept a constant supply of cold fluids coming my way. I was 10th. I’m not real happy with the finish, but it’s hard to blame fitness. If I had planned this race further in advance I would have been running in sweats in the middle of the day, but I had no idea that I would be faced with that kind of heat. Even my sunscreen couldn’t hold up to the weather. My back is blistered with sharp red lines around the edges of my race suit. In short, Cartagena was a bad choice for me.

Other than the race, I thought Cartagena was a cool city. The old town is a place I could have wondered through for a day, if I had the chance. Where I was staying was a younger, more beach oriented area. It was littered with expensive fast food and not many healthy restaurant options, so if I ever go back I know to stay in the older part of the city. I will say the race was well organized and they were prepared with plenty of water stations on the run (in 10km there were 20 chances to get water). I only wish there were protocol for extra water on the bike, or at least a course with some shade. An 11:45am start in weather like that is not safe for anyone.

Next up is another Colombian race, but I’m heading up into the mountains near Medellin. The town is called Guatape, and it’s nothing like Cartagena.

Today I raced the 5150 New Orleans… duathlon. The swim was cancelled due to high winds. Apparently they couldn’t even get the buoys to stay anchored. I was bummed, but what can you do? I flew all the way here, I’m fit, so I just warmed up like I had been planning to do a Duathlon all along. The new format was 2mi / 40km / 10km; run / bike / run. I took off and ran with Kris Gemmell for the first 2 miles. I was pretty ecstatic to be running with such a great athlete, and even more stoked to see everyone else falling off the pace while I was wondering if we were going hard enough. After (what is becoming my normal) fumbling through T1 I got on the bike, caught Gemmell (he passed me out of transition while I was fumbling) took the lead and never looked back. It was the windiest race I’ve ever done, and really hard. I had a giant lead going into T2, but that was completely unknown to me. I just kept running. At 5k I had over a minute on Gemmell and the rest of the boys, which was great because the last couple miles hurt like no other race format. Duathlons are hard! I won with a pretty big margin.

I’m really happy with where my fitness is right now. I haven’t done anything special in training, I’m just working hard. I haven’t rested for a race yet, but I’m learning just how much work I can do and still perform well (I put in 24 hours this week in 5 days before the race, and did a hard track workout Thursday.) I feel like I’m finally making progress toward being an all-around triathlete, and being able to run away from a strong field at a duathlon certainly helps reinforce that. I wish we could have swum, I think there were some talented guys that didn’t get to show their strength today because of the course change. Still, being able to win under any circumstance is the type of athlete I want to become.

A huge thanks to K-Swiss, Garmin, Powerbar, Rudy Project, and Blue Seventy (even if I didn’t get to use my swim skin today) for helping me get there, along with all of your support, my family, my friends, and everyone that tells me to kick butt before my races. You all are awesome!

Here’s my reward for the day: a graph with myself as the zero axis!!

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.

I didn’t go to Australia, but I wanted to know what happened at the World Cup today. Here’s a graph that shows it all. There was a big pack on the bike, two small breaks, some people got dropped from the bike then picked up by Chris Foster (he was riding solo after the swim). Kahlefeldt won from the main pack, the first guy in the breakaway was Rudy Wild in 5th. The zero line is Kahlefeldt, everyone else is plotted by their time difference from him at each point of the race.

Saturday I started off my season with a draft-legal sprint race in Clermont Florida. It’s a race that Jarrod Shoemaker helped to organize, and it was a fairly well run event. This is my first time to Clermont, and I’m surprised that it is not the pancake flat expanse of nothingness that I normally associate with Florida. That said, the course was an out-and-back on a completely flat section of state park, so it was really fast.

The swim was a bit unusual in that 75 men were lined up on a very small section of beach, then funneled out into the shallow water for 7.5 minutes of “swimming” where one spectator with a stop watch only recorded about 4 minutes of actual swimming in what should have been a 750 meter course. That’s because the water was about knee deep for the first (and last) 100 meters or so, and never did drop off. At the buoy people were standing and pushing off to change direction (maybe chest deep), and the leaders of the swim were the taller athletes with long legs. I was 10th out of the water, which was a bit frustrating. I spent the whole 4 minutes of swimming catching the dolphin diving giraffes only to take the lead as we stood up to high-knee it back out. Still, 10th out and first American from the water is good enough to make it into a break with a good transition.

I haven’t practiced my transitions since my last race of the year, but Saturday they were spot on. I came out and started rotating with three other men while the crowd yelled “Jarrod’s not with you, push it!” That lasted about half of the first of four laps before the long string of single riders came together like an accordion into a pack of about 40-45 riders – including Shoemaker. Chris Foster came to the front and set a strong pace that mostly kept people from attacking. I still tried, though I was hoping Chris would come with me, but he was content with setting the pace in front. The only chance for a successful break at this race would have been for someone to block while a couple of people with firepower made their move. My attempts failed, and I resigned to sitting near the front, out of danger – and helping set the pace.

Into T2 I made sure I was in the front. It was kind of nice, actually, I seemed to get some respect from other athletes because when I started moving toward the front people just kind of parted ways. In a WCS race, that wouldn’t have happened. I could have sat in front and set the pace for 38k in a WCS race and still had guys from the back of the pack trying to box me out of T2. It took me 23 seconds to switch into my K-Swiss, which made me the fastest man through transition. I took off at my best clip. It was about a kilometer into the race when Jarrod and a few other runners came by me, and it took me deep into the red to try to match their pace. We were flying! I managed to yo-yo off the back for the rest of the first of a two lap run, before I started overtaking some of the guys that were blowing up harder than me. Eventually I was running in a pack of three Mexicans and Manuel Huerta, though when I passed Manny it must have reminded him he was racing because he put in a surge that I couldn’t match. I ran on his heels the rest of the second lap and finished in 13th place with a 5k run split of 14:51.

Now, the leaders came in with runs of 13:50-ish, so we know the course was short, but I didn’t start my Garmin until a little ways into the run, so I don’t have an exact measurement. I do know that for the 2.5 miles that I did record of the run, I averaged right at 5 minute pace – according to the GPS. Assuming my first 1k was faster than the last 4, I was probably running a legitimate 15:20. Extrapolate that to the leaders, and they were running a legitimate sub 14:30 5k (being conservative). Blazing fast. Especially for the first race of the season.

Thirteenth certainly wasn’t my goal for this race, but I’m really happy with where I am at for Mach fitness. Had the swim involved more swimming I think a breakaway would have been a very real scenario with Fleischmann Dye Mejia and a few others. As far as a foot race goes, this race was probably as fast as any – with plenty of college running talent in the mix, as well as a bunch of guys who normally don’t have the gills to be in the mix after T1. I’m just happy the first race is out of the way, time to focus on Miami International in two weeks!

This is a “fun” little highlight video to start off the 2011 triathlon season. Get pumped.

This is the promo video that was made from the Super Sprint Triathlon Grand Prix – next year’s series will be amazing!

The race was really fun in Phoenix last weekend. This video says it all:

Let me set the stage: Oceanside California. Just a few miles up the coast from San Diego, Oceanside is a small town that has managed to preserve the old-California feel that many believe to exist only in the writings of the beat generation. The town is lifted up from the beach by a tall bluff, on top of which runs a street buzzing with bike cruisers, weekend warrior cyclists and wetsuit-clad surfers heading down to the sand below. At the base of the bluff is a boardwalk, which was converted for a day into the first course in what will prove to be the most exciting triathlon series in the United States – the Super Sprint Triathlon Grand Prix.

Marc Lees, the owner of Race Day Wheels, and the director for the series decided to mimic the Australian Grand Prix series from ten years ago because of the drama rich, made-for-television format. This series is made to showcase the pros. The course, which was just one of several different Grand Prix formats which all take less than an hour to complete, was a 400m swim through surf and chop, an 8-lap 8km bike and a 4-lap 2.4km run – twice around. That meant that during the bike and run stages alone there were 24 laps, but the course was so small that the athletes were really only out of sight from the grand stands when we were duck diving waves during the swim. The race was set up for the fans, and it made it incredible for the athletes.

We started the race from the sandy beach to a vocal “GO!” by Marc Lees. Beach starts have never been my forte (short legs don’t get me very far before I have to start swimming) but as soon as we hit a couple waves I was moving forward. I thought the roughness was over after I made it past the breakers, but I found myself swimming next to a big guy with a death wish (I’m not 100% sure who it was, and if I said who I thought it was some people may think I have a problem with World Champions – I don’t). I’m not one to back down when someone’s being overly aggressive, and my line was perfect, so it wasn’t me that needed to turn. I hit back, rammed back, and eventually left the guy behind when I dove and dolphin kicked around the first buoy. From there I started catching the guys who had gotten away from me on the start, and by the time we were swimming in (looking over our shoulders in hopes of catching a wave) I was up near the front. McClarty and Zaferes (both excellent swimmers who live near the beach) managed to catch waves ahead of me and they had a sizable gap heading back across the beach toward transition. To my surprise, Jarrod Shoemaker came out of the water with me. It turns out he used to do beach lifeguard competitions and – while he does hate cold water – he’s quite good at surf swimming. I hopped on the bike and cleared transition ahead of everyone else. The first lap I thought I could catch Zaferes and McClarty, but the firepower of Cameron Dye, Shoemaker, Brendan Sexton and Chris McCormack behind me made my mission suicidal. I backed off and let the group catch me so we could work together. My plan was to go hard the first round, and hit it on the second, so going all kamikaze in the first ten minutes of the race would have been the dumb choice. We caught up to the leaders, but Dye and myself were the only ones working for the first few laps. I turned to Macca, who was sitting comfortably third wheel and said, “c’mon you lazy [can’t remember the noun I used, but it wasn’t nice]”. That seemed to light the fire because he came around with an acceleration that was all I could do to hang onto. I haven’t been able to look at the lap data from my Garmin Edge 705 yet (it automatically laps by position, so I have lap splits and wattage data for all 16 bike laps during the race – I’ll upload it to Garmin Connect when I get back to Colorado), but I’m pretty sure our laps with Macca at the front were the fastest laps of the day. Hitting T2 I had a transition so fast that I started the run in the lead. If you’ve followed my results you know that my T2 times are rarely exceptional, so this was a good sign for me (especially considering we had to set up our bike and helmet so that it would be ready for the second round). I lead for about two laps before Brendan Sexton came past me. The run course was really fun. It went 100m out of transition into a 180, then back 20m into a right turn up a steep ramp to the top of the pier, then a 180 and half way up another ramp toward the top of the bluff, then a 180 and back down to the boardwalk the way we came, a right turn 200 meters to a 180 and back to transition to start the next lap. This meant that we were visible to the fans and TV cameras 100% of the time during the run.

My lead lasted for the first two laps of the run, then Brendan Sexton passed me and stayed just ahead of me until we dove back into the water out of T3 (run-to-swim). We managed to gap the group behind us in the second swim, despite the pain we all had to endure to get out past the waves. Believe me, swimming after a full-tilt 1.5 mile run is not easy! Out of T4 (swim-to-bike) Sexton and I had about 15 seconds over the chase group of Dye, Shoemaker and Filip Ospaly (who managed to run and swim his way up the ranks after a terrible first swim). Dye is a beast on the bike and Sexton and I couldn’t hold him off. Ospaly and Shoemaker sat on Dye’s wheel doing as little work as possible (with sixteen 180 degree turns in five miles the accelerations hurt everyone, no matter how well you draft), and when their group caught us it was pretty clear that their legs were fresher than ours. As we lapped Zaferes and Brian Fleishmann (he was sick, this is not normal for him to get lapped) the two of them recovered on my wheel for a lap then took over in the lead and blocked the wind for the final two laps. It was definitely helpful, but I wish they’d joined in a little sooner to hold off Dye’s group. (a quick aside, lapped athletes were allowed to stay in and even join in groups ahead of them. It made for a unique strategic opportunity if you could lap a strong cyclist). Out of T5 I was in the lead again, but this time it only lasted until the first hill. Ospaly and Sexton came by me fast, and it was all I could do to hang on Sexton’s heels for two laps. In the meantime Jarrod seemed to be accelerating from behind us and it was when he passed me that Sexton’s pace became more than I could match. I feel back with Dye right on my feet, ensuring that I kept the accelerator floored all the way to the finish line. I placed 4th, just seconds ahead of Dye, and not far behind Sexton and Shoemaker. Ospaly put together a blazing fast run that left us all in the dust.

That race was by far the most fun I’ve had racing professional triahtlon. It was the proximity of the fans, and the energy of the day that made it so much fun. This series will a lot of fun to watch next year!!