I place 23rd at the 2015 Ironman 70.3 World Championships in Zell am See, Austria. It was an incredible course, but an unexpectedly hot day.

This year there have been quite a few races with start-lists that resemble a championship, but the World Championship is unique in that it boasts the top names, and every one of them is ready to go. No excuses. The World Championships comes once a year, and even if the same people show up, there’s no faking your way to the top of this one.

It’s taken me a while to write this post. At first, I wanted to digest my race and come up with a reason for mediocrity. Then I was hoping to forget it. Then I realized that 23rd in the world on a day when suffering was a common theme among the pros, I really can’t be ashamed.

Did I have the race I thought I would?

No.

I ran the slowest run split of my career (medical reasons excluded), and instead of leading off the bike like I did a year ago I found myself at a 10 minute deficit starting my 13.1 mile shuffle. But the fact is, I did everything I could have to prepare for that race. The conditions were the same for all of us and on race day, I was 23rd.

It started at quarter to eleven in the morning. The little mountain village of Zell am See was unseasonably hot, creeping over 80 before the race start where the professional field was lined up in wetsuits. The swim started off pretty gentle. By the half-way point I was feeling pretty relaxed, already thinking about the bike and how to conserve energy up to the start of the climb.

Then we rounded the buoys to head back to the transition area and the pace changed dramatically. The field, that was four wide prior to the turn, instantly strung out to a single file line before splitting. The guy in front of me lost the feet in front of him, I tried to go around but couldn’t quite close the gap.

I arrived at my bike in T1 as the last few guys in the front pack were pulling their bikes off the racks. In the first five kilometers I managed to pick off a couple of guys. First, Jimmy Seear, great swimmer, no surprise. Then I caught Kevin Collington. I’m pretty sure he will not be upset for me to point out that it’s not a good sign for me to come out of the water behind him. Different strengths is all.

So by this point I’m thinking, “Shit.” I can still see the lead group, but my power is low and I’m starting to regret wearing a heart rate strap because my pulse is around 180 and I’m not even close to the power I had planned.

That group was hovering out in front of me up until the bottom of the climb, around 20 kilometers in. The climb on this course is spectacular: 15 kilometers of steady climbing that varies from about 5 to 14 percent grade and finishes with a kicker. I started off following Joe Gambles and feeling pretty good. Then he dropped me. Then a group of Sebastian Keinle and Jesse Thomas caught me. Then dropped me.

And the whole time I have this unreasonably optimistic outlook like somehow I’m conserving energy and at some point I’m just going to light some matches and burn the whole place down… with my… um… awesomeness.

But I’m no alchemist, and as much as I wish optimism could turn my lead legs to gold, it didn’t. I started the run and it was the first time in my half-ironman experiences when I immediately wished I were still on my bike. I shuffled from transition and tried to get into a rhythm, but my first mile took more than six minutes and I slowed from there. It was clear pretty early that I was no longer eligible for a top 10 finish, but even without prize money or points I wanted to finish. I struggled through the 13.1 mile run and crossed the line in 23rd.

In the time I’ve spent reflecting before writing this, I wish I could make some great statement of what I learned from the experience, but there’s just no great lesson. On that day I gave what I had and it was not what I expected of myself. There were plenty of environmental factors, but I’ve faced and overcome all of those factors in the past. I didn’t try anything new on race day and I actually did a better-than-normal job of watching my nutrition and sleep before race day. After eight years of professional racing, this might be the first time I’ve bombed a race and walked away without any great lessons to take to my next race.

There were some positives to come from the race though. I had a really nice trip to Austria. I stayed with my long-time friend Peggy McDowell Cramer, who is always good for a story and some positive vibes. I met a bunch of great people, which seems to be common at world championships – the crème rise to the top. The area of Zell am See is absolutely amazing and I will want to come back for sure. Despite a disappointing performance, I left pretty happy with the week as a whole.

And as a final point: 23rd in the world is still pretty damn good.

Sunday I earned my third win at the 2015 Panasonic New York City Triathlon. I won the men’s race, and also the “equalizer” by catching the women’s leader, Alicia Kaye.

This race was among the most exciting of career, and certainly tops the list for the most brutal shoot out between myself an another athlete. I raced for over an hour-and-forty-minutes within a few seconds of Cameron Dye, both of us jockeying for the lead, both of us surging to drop the other. We raced our hearts out right up to the line. Cam and I have raced each other more than we have raced any other individual. We have similar backgrounds, as collegiate swimmers who found our real talent lies in riding a bike really fast between swimming and running. Cam probably has a decent margin over me in total number of victories, but we go back and forth throughout every season. Frequently one of us gets away on the bike and holds on for the win. Sometimes I’ll catch Cam on the run, sometimes we come off the bike together and he runs away from me. In Oceanside last year at the Lifetime Champs Cam rode away on the bike and I ran him down to a sprint finish on the run that determined the series champion for the entire season (I lost that one).

We have a winner! Ben Collins is your back-to-back Panasonic New York City Triathlon champion! #NYCTri pic.twitter.com/81ZtK3flDv

— NYC Triathlon (@NYCTRIATHLON) July 19, 2015

Even as I crossed the line I couldn’t believe I had won

Yet Sunday was probably the most exciting race we have had together, a fact that the timing splits alone don’t show. It was a real edge-of-the-seat, “Dye-Collins-Dye” race right up to the finish. I was jazzed after the race – I felt like I was floating on clouds for the remainder of the day – It was the kind of race where we gave everything we had and brought out the best in each other. Neither of us gave up and the result came down to the final steps of an incredibly challenging day. New York City is a race I love, and I have given it everything I had to give in the past, but this year it took more than I knew I could give to cross the line first.

It all started in the Hudson. The race was an equalizer format, meaning the women’s field was given an 11-minute-37-second lead over the men’s field, and a $3,000 bonus was given to the first person to cross the finish-line, man or woman. Last year Alicia Kaye had less time and I was only able to catch her (in the final mile of the run) by setting a course record and running sub-32-minutes. I wasn’t confident I could do any better this year.

The swim in New York is the most talked about portion of the race. The river is brown and tastes salty and there’s debris floating by that gives the impression that it’s not particularly clean. In reality, the swim is somewhat unique in that strategy comes into play. Even though the current can drag swimmers along to stunningly fast swim times – in the pro wave it feels like a 12 minute sprint – how you position yourself at the start and how well you can stay in the stronger current is critical to ensuring the best swimmers gain as much time as possible over the top runners of the field.

The first transition is really long, likely a full kilometer, so runners have a chance to rejoin the swimmers prior to the start of the bike, and if the swimmers don’t position wisely with the current they can easily find themselves in a bike pack with guys who typically aren’t starting the run from the front.

Cam led the swim and chose a perfect line, skirting the edge of the course as close as the marshals would allow. There was another athlete in the mix with us, swimming second with me in third, but neither Cameron nor myself knows who he was. Still, we stared the bike with Rudy Von Berg, who is a real threat on the run. As I turned on the West Side Highway I planned to set the pace extremely fast until Rudy was gone from our wheels. Cam had another idea and I found myself pushing beyond my comfort zone to keep up. Rudy, and everyone else near us, was gone by the time I was comfortable enough to turn my head. I took the lead once in the first 10 miles, but Cameron was right next to me the whole time. He retook the lead and the pace just stayed at that high level. Nearing the turnaround we saw Alicia coming back south and I realized we were farther behind than I had been a year earlier. I used the momentum of a descent, took the lead and attempted to maintain the intensity Cameron had set to effectively drop the rest of the men’s field. From there to the finish of the bike leg we stayed in a static formation with Cam staggered and just behind while I tried and tried to pace the back half fast enough to drop him and catch Alicia.

We came into the second transition in close to record time, with me edging out Cameron for the fastest bike split by split seconds. I was aching from the effort, but I know from past experience that Cameron’s run speed doesn’t seem to be hindered by insanely hard bike legs. I had a quick transition and charged up the hill from transition with the sounds of heavy breathing right over my shoulder.

The first mile of the run is across West 72^nd Street. I love this part of the race because of how quiet the street is at 7am on a Sunday, and with the road completely closed to traffic. Normally that moment pulls my head from the race long enough for me to appreciate the silence, but this year I was longing for a familiar voice to be there cheering. That voice never came, and half way to Central Park Cameron came by me at a speed I could barely match and set the pace a notch above what I thought I could maintain.

The entrance to Central Park is right at the 1-mile marker and it marks the end of flat running. At this point I was craving an aid station as the humidity and heat started to grip me. Cameron turned into the park with just behind. My watch clicked a mile-split at 5:40, a fan shouted that we were 60 seconds behind Alicia Kaye, and as the ground contorted into hills Cameron quickened the pace and gapped me.

For the next mile I had two thoughts: first, I tried to focus on form and staying relaxed as I knew the third mile is where the rolling asphalt turns to substantial hills. Second, I told myself I couldn’t give up on Cameron or the runners behind would make quick work of me if I did. At that point I had ceded victory to Cameron, and his profile shrank.

In the third mile things became interesting. In my effort to keep Cameron close I actually began to close back in. Over every hill I came a little closer, and as we passed into the fourth mile, looping by the aquatic park at the north end of the park I found myself back in Cameron’s draft, turning south and running back up the last major hill of the run. Up ahead Alicia came into view and we passed her right at the 4-mile marker, the two of us just a stride apart.

With that pass of Alicia the focus for both of us seemed to narrow. It was battle for the win, and for the equalizer bonus as well. In my world, Cameron was the only other person who existed at that moment.

I tried to pass Cameron, knowing that I couldn’t match his speed if it came to a sprint in the end. Cameron countered with a surge and dropped me again. I pumped my arms to force turnover and scraped my way back to his shoulder. I tried again, he dropped me again, I scraped back. As we approached the five-mile mark I thought, “I have one more attempt and if it doesn’t work he’s won.” We crossed the timing pad at mile five in lockstep but as I came around Cam countered again and kept me on his shoulder. We sped past the Metropolitan Museum of Art at our fastest pace of the day and my mind buzzed with the dilemma. I had no surge left, my sprint speed has been sacrificed for half-ironman training, and the heat was beginning to tighten my lungs in a familiar way. I looked at Cam in the corner of my eye and willed myself to pump the arms and pick up the pace. We were probably 1200 meters from the finish with more downhill than up, and I decided to start my “sprint” there. My legs were going to buckle, I just hoped it would happen after the finish line. I had no idea who would win the race.

The effort put me a stride ahead of Cameron. Then another stride length, and suddenly his footsteps were no longer audible. The charge of the crowd began pounding into my ears and I saw the familiar turnoff into the final lollipop. Around the grand-stands and fountain and into the finish chute. I never looked back I just ran with everything I had. At the finish they announced me as the winner and I realized Cameron was not within sprinting distance. I crossed. I grabbed the tape. I fell to my knees and held the banner over my head in Central Park for the third time.

I raced Vineman 70.3 for the first time this year. It was a stunningly beautiful course on an abnormally temperate day in northern California. The swim, in a river so shallow as to allow mid-swim dolphin diving, went smoothly. John Dahlz, who I haven’t seen in years, proved he’s still a great swimmer as he led the field from the first leg. I was a bit slow out of the uphill mount line, but I took the lead about a mile into the race, where I stayed through the half-way point. Seven men lined up behind me at the appropriate 12m distance, but I stayed in front hoping to keep the pace unmanageable for some. In Geyserville, around mile 30, there’s a long and fast descent into town where we make two 90 degree turns. Sam Appleton made a break here as the group accordioned and by the time any of us could respond he was gone. It was a smart move and despite TJ Tollakson and Tim O’Donnell coming to the front to rotate pace-setting, Sam managed to get two full minutes over the final 26 miles of the race. What’s more impressive is that he held onto that two minute lead for the entire half marathon over incredible runners like Craig Alexander, Kevin Collington and Tim. I came into transition second, started the run with Tim and Crowie, but didn’t have the legs to hang on for the first 5 kilometers. I sank back to seventh, but held that pace, just under six minutes per mile, and managed to pass two men, clawing my way back into fifth position just quarter mile from the finish.

In 2007 I was training in Marin County, abusing Loren’s hospitality in exchange for some terrible baby sitting and some help reaching new levels on Rock Band. I was getting ready for the ITU Hamburg World Championships, my last race as an amateur, and needed a time trial bike to replace the ill-fitting guru I had purchased (with an entire month’s paycheck) from a guy on Oahu. In an effort to help me find a bike sponsor, Loren took me to watch the Vineman 70.3 in Sanoma. He’s quite the salesman and we ended up landing a deal with Beyond Fabrication out of Mountain View. For a not-yet-pro, it was an amazing opportunity to have my first carbon framed bike.

What I remember most about that day, however, was watching Luke McKenzie run down Chris Lieto after both of them rode faster than I could have dreamed of at the time. It was eye opening to see their performances, and I remember being so excited that soon I would turn pro and get to race against talented guys like that.. I also remembered that the course was beautiful, though returning in 2015 it was even more stunning than I could have hoped.

Yes, I keep a list of bucket-list races. St Croix 70.3 was on there, as well as St George, New York City, Lifetime Fitness (Minneapolis), Alcatraz and others. I still have a few more to hit, mainly oversees. Ironman Lake Stevens 70.3 was on there, but the cut the prize purse before I could squeeze it into my schedule.

This weekend will be my fifth time racing New York City. It’s a race I love to do. I’ve won the race twice, was second once, and when I was just a young, rookie pro finished so far back as to be left in disbelief of how much faster than me the top guys were racing.

It took eight years to fit Vineman 70.3 onto my schedule for the first time, but I would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a destination race. Riding through vineyards, over hills and through valleys… We even run through the field of a La Crema vineyard, past men carefully checking grapes. The finish line is built from wine barrels, and if you make the podium you’re presented with a Vineman wine, in a custom Vineman 70.3 box. It’s an incredible and unique racing experience. Better than my expectations.

(photo courtesy of Ironman.com)On Saturday I competed in the North American Championships for Ironman 70.3, held in Saint George, Utah. I raced hard, set myself up for a top finish, and when my body gave in to the caliber of the course, I held on for a 10th place finish.

St George is a beautiful place. It’s in the southwest corner of Utah, surrounded by natural beauty that makes it easy to understand why the west was settled. The mountains surrounding St George also make for an especially challenging venue for a Half-Ironman, and it’s easy to see why World Triathlon Corporation has settled here for the North American Championships.

The swim course is in a pristine lake East of St George, where the spring-fed water is crystal clear and has just the right amount of crisp without being overly cold. We swam three sides of a rectangle around a red rock outcrop. John Bird, from Canada, was the leader throughout the swim. I was a few guys back. During this swim I had a very new experience: I could actually recognize the guys around me and I knew what was going on. For eight years I’ve been racing with pool goggles – the smaller the better – and making fun of guys like Kevin Collington for wearing what I jokingly referred to ask snorkel masks. Then a few months ago Blue Seventy sent me a pair of their Hydra-Vision goggles because they were out of the pool goggles I normally order. You can get them with polarized lenses, and the clarity is remarkable. Kevin, I’m sorry I ever made fun of your goggle choice.

I was third onto the bike, and after about 10 miles I found myself in a small breakaway. There are mixed reports out there of how small, but I think it was Brent McMahon, Tim Don and myself. Andrew Yoder came close to catching back on, but with a poor swim the effort to bridge proved to be a day-breaker for him.

The bike course is especially challenging. Comparing it to St Croix, where I’ve raced the past two years on this weekend, the weather is less challenging, but the course is equivalent. St Croix has continuous rollers and “the beast”, while St George has longer, sustained climbs, that take you to Snow Canyon with a six mile climb starting at mile 40.

I was pretty nervous about the bike. Mainly because I live in Chicago and any confidence I used to have on descending has  been trained out of me by trainer sessions and a lack of practice. It was also my first attempt to use SRAM Force 1 on a course that is a prime example of when common sense would tell you more gears are better.

(If you don’t care about my rather lengthy process of choosing to ride SRAM 1x, skip down to where I say “back to the race report)

A little background on Force 1: I took an internship at SRAM in their product management division last fall. One of the projects I was there for was the launch of a new road drivetrain featuring just one front chainring and no front derailleur. This is techonology that’s been widely accepted in mountain biking, and is becoming the standard in Cyclocross, but bringing the technology into the traditional road segments poses new challenges. First, gear density (the % difference in gear ratios between adjacent gears) is a much bigger deal to road cyclist than for mountain bikers. Second, road bikes go much faster, so in order to have sufficient high gears, you have to have a huge range to get the low gears that we need for easy rides and mountain climbs.

I rode Force 1 at Challenge Dubai in February, but that was a flat course and it was easy to justify taking off the small ring. The aerodynamics and weight upsides far outweigh the need for a small ring I was never going to use anyway. there I ran a 52 tooth front chainring with an 11-26 cassette. It was basically the same gear range and density that I would have used with a 2x (pronounced two-by) setup.

After that I did two gravel rides on Force 1 – the Barry Rubaix in Michigan where I supported a fellow SRAMmie to help him to a 5th place finish, and the SRAM 1x (“one-by”) product launch in San Louis Obispo where we took editors from around the world on a crazy off-road ride on road bikes to prove that we can ride 1x anywhere. At both of those rides I had no desire for an extra front chain ring, but ssomething kept telling me that it would be different for a hilly triathlon. I even had a discussion with Slowtwitch’s Dan Empfield about whether 1x could be used at Wildflower where I flat out said that for people using triathlon bikes on really hilly terrain, 2x drivetrains are probably the better choice.

I came to St George with my brand-spankin’ new Red & White 2015 Cervelo P5, freshly built with SRAM Force 1. It looked awesome, but I was still nervous about the gearing. I was running a 54 tooth ring with an 11-36 cassette. This gave me a slightly higher high gear and slightly lower low gear than the 53/39 front and  11-25 rear setup I had used last year (a 54-36 is exactly the same gear ratio as a 39-26, and the 54-11 is higher than a 53-11). So I knew I had the right range, but to get there I was losing some of the middle ratios and I was worried I would be “gear gazing” (a term I made up while analyzing this potential problem).

To analyze the downside of this problem I first created my own excel model, looking at the gaps between gears (there is one 17% jump in an 11-36 cassette, while my 11-26 never exceeds 15%). I looked at the speeds where I would be between gears, given my preference for 95rpm, and what my cadence variance would be in order to maintain that speed. Without knowing exactly how much of the race I would be at any of those speeds I really didn’t know if it would be a problem that at 28.5mph I would have to choose between 88rpm or 102 rpm (based on my training data, 102 wouldn’t be out of my normal range, but 88 would be).

To figure out specifically what ratios I would need for this race I reached out to BestBikeSplit.com. These guys have taken time trial analytics to a new level. They will take your FTP testing data, plus a course profile and create a specific race plan for you to set the best possible time on the course. I explained my problem and they jumped at the chance to play with the numbers and help me out. I sent them a bunch of Garmin files from past races so they could get an idea of my race power abilities, as well as my drag coefficient. They then built a race plan for me at St George and from that drew a frequency chart to show the percent of time during the race that I would be in any given gear, given 95rpm cadence as a target.

Here’s the chart:

 

 

 

What’s important here is that this is what I would use if I had every gear from 11 up to 36. The 11-36 Cassette, however, has 11,12,13,15,17,19,22,25,28,32, and 36 teeth cogs. The majority of the missing cogs are barely used and aren’t much different from their closest peer (35 and 36 are < 3% apart). What made me worry is that the 14 is missing, which accounts for almost 12% of my race, and the 15 is (15-14)/14*100 = 7% away – meaning about 6rpm over my “ideal”.

Riding the course a couple days before, I realized my fears were likely not warranted. I rode Snow Canyon and some flats and descents – a 30 mile ride – with one of the guys from the SRAM neutral support crew. I didn’t have any problems on the flat sections and going up the hills it occurred to me that the 54-26 was letting me spin faster than my ride partner could on his 2x road bike.  It seemed I had both the range and gear density to be happy, and with a couple days to go my nerves eased up a bit.

During the race, the times I noticed that I didn’t have a front derailleur were when Brent was in front of me and I would yoyo into him as he shifted into the small ring for a hill (really three shifts, because you have to shift the front, then shift the rear a couple of times to get to the next ratio from where you were). While he was shifting a bunch, I was just one click away from my next gear, and it seemed to save me more than I expected. I never felt like I needed a gear that I didn’t have, and I had as much range as I needed. I loved racing on 1x, and I no longer think there’s a course that can’t be raced with it.

—back to the race report—-

Through the bike I felt great. I never felt like I was really pushing my limits and I was confident in my ability to run off what seemed to be a well paced bike leg.

Starting the run I was certainly tired, but not more than expected. I grabbed my hydration pack and started on what I knew to be a very challenging run course. I knew it was about three miles uphill. I had seen the course, and yet as I climbed those first three miles I began wishing they would end. I still felt good past the peak, and was holding onto second up until Tim Don passed me at mile 5. At the first of several turnarounds I saw I was still pretty far up from the next group and I really thought holding onto third would be no problem.

Then things went south.

Around mile six my GI system turned to liquid, I made a pit stop, after which my muscles turned to jello. I started running progressively slower until my brain could focus on nothing but the distance to the finish line. Every step was harder than the one before and as I finally approached the long three mile descent I found I couldn’t even come close to the pace I had held going up the same hill. I was fried, dehydrated, exhausted, and past what my current fitness would allow. I fought hard until the finish, but felt like I was crawling as pack after pack passed me in the final miles. In the last two miles I sank from sixth to tenth where I crossed the line.

After the race I had a moment where I thought this was the worst I’ve fallen apart at a race. Then I remembered Puerto Rico, and my first attempt at St Croix, and how I had finished in the hospital at both of those. Considering that, I’ve come a long way. I know early season races are tough to hit hard after long Chicago winters. But taking that chance – putting it on the line to see what happens – that’s what I enjoy about the sport, and I’ll keep taking risks. Sometimes they pay off.

Tim Don ended up winning the race. I found this out a couple hours after the finish when I emerged from the med tent. When Tim passed me at mile five we were a couple minutes down from Brent, and I assumed that Brent had held on for the win. Turns out I wasn’t the only one to blow up at the end, Brent just did it a little more gracefully and far more profitably. Congrats to Tim on the win, and to Brent for laying it out there with me through 56 miles on the bike and then starting off the run like a man without fear.

 

I started off the season early this year with a new Challenge Family race in Dubai. I placed 16^th there against a start list as glittered with big names as a world championship. I’m never satisfied with a finish behind other athletes but I don’t think I could have raced any faster, either through execution or preparation.

My 16^th place finish takes into account a penalty of four minutes that was given to me and four other athletes for taking a wrong turn on the race course. There has been quite a bit of chatter about this on social media, Slowtwitch and other pro blogs, and I’ll give my take on it in the body of my race report. In short, I followed other athletes and what I believed to be an official through a turn. The markings on the course were either lacking or had been blown over, and I was too far back to see the lead vehicles. I knew from studying the course maps to expect a U-Turn and I had no doubt during the race that I was following the correct route. It cut about 2.3km off the length of my ride, and the officials decided to equalize that with a quite generous 4-minute penalty, which would have been about 30 seconds longer than our average speed would indicate that segment to take. So while I crossed the line in 10^th place, my adjusted time placed me 16^th.

It’s been a busy winter. Since my last race I took two months off – both needed and deserved after another strong season of racing in 2014. I traveled over the holidays with Abby, and we got engaged. I was elected to the USA Triathlon Board of Directors, managed to make Dean’s list again in my MBA courses at University of Chicago, and I started working at SRAM in Product Management.

When I signed up for such a busy schedule I figured I would keep active, but postpone serious training until March, when my MBA internship at SRAM ends and Chicago thaws a bit.

But then Challenge Family announced a “Triple Crown” series in the Middle East, with big prize money on the line and a massive $1,000,000 bonus at the end for the series winner. With about 9 weeks to go before the race I decided to put my head down and see if I could get myself in shape. I figured if someone was going to win that $1M it might as well be me. Plus, I’d never been to Dubai and it sounded like fun (it was).

For those 9 weeks my week looked like this:

Training:

Monday: “off day” yoga at lunch, or an 8 mile run with coworkers if my legs could handle it

Tuesday: 5-7:30 am brick (indoor, obviously), train to work by 8:30, swim 60 minutes at lunch, class from 6-9pm, home for some ice cream and bed

Wednesday: sleep in to 6am, work by 8am, 60 minute run at lunch with coworkers on the lakeshore (brrrr…), PM workout at WellFit Triahtlon Club (I lead a class there once a week), home by 9pm for a late dinner and bed

Thursday: 5-7:30am brick, work by 8:30, lunch swim, home by 7pm

Friday: 5-7:30 bike ride, lunch run from work on the lakeshore

Saturday: 2hr am swim, long trainer ride, long run on the treadmill

Sunday: same as Saturday

It was not an easy schedule, but I gained fitness as quickly over those nine weeks as I ever have, even with full-time training. The biggest sacrifice was in my social life. I gave that up for sleep.

By the time Dubai rolled around at the end of February, I felt pretty good. I was putting out numbers on the bike that looked like mid-season power numbers. I knew my endurance was questionable without any really long efforts, but I thought I had a chance – and the only way I could find out is to go and give it a shot. My swim has never been too much of an issue, and my runs were periodically impressive – though it’s hard to judge efforts from under layers of clothing, face masks, and ski goggles to protect from sub-zero “lake effect” winds on the lakefront.

I arrived in Dubai with a homestay arranged through the Dubai Triathlon Club. My family was fantastic, keeping me fed and arranging all my transportation needs while I was there. They were definitely the highlight of my trip and no matter what happened on race day my trip would have been a success because of them.

The race itself was unique in location, but once on site it felt like any other high budget race (think high profile 70.3 or Rev3 race). That is to say that I felt right at home, and was able to prepare for race day without distractions from anything abnormal.

The swim was wetsuit legal, as strong winds had blown in and churned up cold water, dropping the temp to 21C the night before. As winds continued to pound the shore, the first leg of the race was really choppy, but I managed to stay near the front and was in fine position starting the bike leg of the race.

I passed a number of athletes in the beginning and with the 20mph tail wind I was locked into my biggest gear, hitting sustained 30mph speeds on flat ground. But once the course changed directions I got knocked around by that wind. My disc was nearly blown out from under me on the first turn and I began taking roundabouts at gingerly speeds (not really typical of my riding style, but without any outdoor riding experience I’m a bit rusty with handling). I settled in around 5^th place with a group ahead about 30 seconds and Andy Potts right behind me.

We rode straight inland and were on wide, clean boulevards in the middle of sandy, exposed desert. The signs had been blown over at most of the intersections and I was pushing pretty hard to stay in contact with the motorcycles and athletes ahead because it was hard to know going into a roundabout where I was supposed to exit. Typically there were cones planted at some point in the turn that indicated it was time to exit the circle. I later found out that I and four other athletes made a premature U-Turn at one of these intersections. I had no idea until several hours after finishing. It’s really too bad that it happened. It changed the dynamics of the race. I don’t remember any point in the race where there was not a motorcycle with us five, and even after we split into a group of three and a group of two there was still a marshal bouncing back and forth and keeping us honest. I ca only imagine that the marshal made the same mistake as us.

By the final 30km of the bike, as we headed back into strengthening winds my legs were making it clear that my volume has not been sufficient for the effort I was putting in. My power numbers were dropping to pathetic levels and the wind began to push me around. I felt my whole upper body tightening up to control the bike, which is counter-productive, as a relaxed body is much more efficient into the wind.

Starting the run I had what is becoming a familiar feeling as I race more long distance races: pure relief to be off the saddle. I started running and felt awesome. All the fatigue in my legs from the bike seems to melt as I stretched out my torso and leaned into the wind. I was so relaxed I felt like my eyes close and my cheeks shake in the wind. My first couple of miles went by in 5:20 pace, and I dropped the men behind me. Unfortunately, this feeling passed, I woke up, my legs reminded me that had just put out far more effort than any of their training sessions this year, and with a tail wind on the 2^nd 5k I struggled to hold the pace I had set out with. I ended up even splitting the 21k in 1:14:51, with five men passing me along the way. I crossed the line 10^th and was lucky enough to be selected for drug testing. The chaperone was friendly, as has been my luck, and I made a new friend while wondering between massage, medical and anti-doping tents to recover from the race.

It was several hours later that I heard about the protest filed by some of my competitors, naming me, Potts, Bazone, Raelert, and Kung. I was confused because I didn’t believe I had done anything wrong. It did make clear why there were two SUVs right in front of Martin Jensen when he passed us 80km into the bike – he had apparently been leading the race and was passing us a second time. I remember yelling to the ref as he passed that he was drafting off the cars, and him making frustrated gestures of his own. In hindsight, the ref probably made the same wrong turn as us and was likely as confused as the rest of us.

So within minutes of getting back to my homestay I found out that I needed to find a ride to the host hotel for a hearing. It was 2:30pm at this point and the hearing was set for 3pm 20 minutes away. Giving up my long desired shower I headed to the hotel where the five of us, plus several of the guys who had noticed what went wrong were there. Going into the room Andy Potts and I expressed concern that this could turn ugly, with lots of emotion and money on the line. We were worried people would speak words they would regret. But this group was well mannered. The athletes protesting didn’t ever accuse us of malicious intent. They expressed that they too had been confused and it was luck that they had spotted some clue as to which way to go at that intersection. They admitted they had nearly gone the wrong way as well, and didn’t feel the athletes should be held at fault for the mistake. Those of us that had gone the wrong way were still confused about where, how, and why the moto with us had not informed us of the wrongdoing. We talked about it, then left for the jury to deliberate. I was told to stay at the hotel while they made a decision, but the decision never came. Hours later, at the award banquet I was finally called into a nearby tent where, just before award presentation, the group was informed that a penalty would be enforced.

By the time I made it home, around 9:30pm, I finally got my shower and then downloaded the file from my Garmin. I compared it to the course map and found that we had missed approximately 2.3km from the published map. Validated in the judge’s decision, I felt terrible for making a mistake, frustrated that the process had taken eight hours to reach a decision, and a sense of hollowness knowing that the dynamics of the race had been altered by a set of unfortunate events. At the time (in short) I was pretty upset.

Looking back, I’m really impressed with the conduct of the athletes involved. It makes me proud that with $300k on the line a group of athletes can sit in a room and politely and calmly discuss something so terrible as course cutting, without resorting to inflammatory remarks, or even peaking the kind of emotion that ruins friendships. I’m proud to be part of a professional group like this, and to know that my competitors respect my as much I respect them.

16^th Place in a field of 70 world class professional men. I could make excuses about how hard it is training in Chicago and how busy I am, but in truth I love it. And if you enjoy what you do you’ll succeed. I don’t think I could have raced better in February, and I’m excited to see where the rest of the season takes me. If Challenge Dubai is any indication, 2015 will be a great season.

Note: the images above are from Tri-Mag Germany – I didn’t take any during the race.