USA Triathlon Sprint National Championships - Race Report

 

Why this Race

Discovery World, host site for the USAT National Championships

I had my sights on this race since before the Ironman last year.  The USA Triathlon National Championships for both Sprint and Olympic Distances are located in a different city throughout the country each year.  This year and last year the race was held in Downtown Milwaukee on the Lakefront.  The previous two years it was located in Burlington, VT.  The two year prior to being Vermont, the race was held in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.  I chose not to race in the National Championships last year due to it being too close to Ironman Wisconsin and opted to focus on long distance training that weekend as opposed to racing in a sprint triathlon.  So, knowing that I would be shifting my focus to short course triathlon in 2014, I committed to the 2014 Sprint National Championships before I was even able to register for it.  As the name implies, this race not only brings in the best triathletes from the immediate area, it brings the best triathletes of the country to race to be called a National Champion.  In addition for the chance to be crowned the best in the country, racing at the National Championships also allows the opportunity to qualify for the World Championships in the following year as part of Team USA.  In order to qualify for Team USA, you need to place in the top 18 in your age group with spots "rolling down" to 25 due to the "age up" rule.  I won't dive in to the specifics of the age up rule, but you can read more about it HERE (towards the bottom).  The Sprint World Championships, much like the National Championships, move from city to city each and every year.  The only difference is the locations vary from country to country across the globe.  Last year the race took place in London and in Aukland, New Zealand the year before.  In 2014 the race will be in Edmonton, Canada.  In 2015 the World Championships will take place in Chicago, IL, only 3 hours south of my hometown!  This will be the first time in 10 years that the Triathlon World Championships will take place in the USA.  

When looking at the 2013 race results, the last athlete to qualify for Team USA in the 30-34 age group finished in 1:09:36.  I crunched some numbers based on some of my own race results from my 2013 season and thought, if everything goes right, I should be able to race a sub 1:09 sprint race.  And just like that my ultimate goal for 2014 was born....Train my ass off in 2014 with a focus on sprint distance triathlons and qualify for Team USA for the opportunity to race at the World Championships in Chicago in 2015.  

Training for this Race

As much as I would love to hire a coach, I simply can not afford one.  I have created every single one of my annual plans and training plans ever since I started racing.  I have done countless hours of reading and researching trying to find the best ways to train for each individual event.  So when I decided to shift my focus from long distance races to sprint distances, I was honestly stumped and rather overwhelmed with the endless possibilities of formats for training and individual workouts.  Training for the Ironman, without getting too specific, was somewhat easy, just continuously build volume and then add more volume to what you had built up previously.  Sprint triathlons, on the other hand, are obviously, shorter so volume isn't the important factor, speed is.  Therefore, volume is not nearly as important as doing specific workouts in each individual discipline to build race specific speed.  I'll be honest, I felt extremely overwhelmed with the endless possibilities of workouts in each of swimming, biking, and running, let alone building a weekly schedule to balance out each daily workout.  I decided to turn to a premade generic training plan for triathlon.  This was the first time I had done anything like this, as I take pride in being self coached.  I found an ambitious Olympic Distance training plan to utilize for the Sprint National Championships.  My thought was that I wanted a relatively higher amount of weekly volume while focusing on speed in my daily workouts.  I hoped that if I would be in top condition for a Olympic Distance race, I should be able to excel in a sprint distance.

I quickly fell in love with the structure of the training plan.  I still had the occasional two-a-day workouts with an AM swim or bike with a PM run.  The longest workout was a weekend brick consisting of a 40 mile bike and a 6 mile run, which took roughly 2:45.  Most of my midweek workouts were no longer than and  60 to 90 minutes.  It worked really well into my family life and gave plenty of time to enjoy time with my kids.

Prerace

The entire week leading up the race was spent on vacation in Rhinelander, WI.  I followed my training plan to a "T" that week.  I found a local YMCA in Rhinelander which had a lap swimming pool that I utilized for my swim workouts.  The only downfall that I see from spending a week of vacation the week BEFORE my biggest triathlon of the year was my lack of discipline in my diet.  It was hard enough giving up beer the entire week, so I wasn't about to be a crabby-pants because I was eating salads all week while everyone else had burgers for dinner with s'mores around the fire.  I still tried my best not to over-indulge too much.  We left for Rhinelander around noon on Saturday, August 2nd and then on Saturday, August 9th, we packed up and drove straight down to Milwaukee.  The ride took a total of about 4 hours and we arrived in Milwaukee around 1:00pm.  The Olympic Distance race was held on Saturday morning and then at 2:00pm registration for the Sprint race opened with bike check-in starting around 2:30pm.  Instead of dragging Sarah and the kids around the race and forcing them to stand in lines, Sarah chose to spend a few hours at the Milwaukee County Zoo.  I dropped the girls off at the Zoo and then headed to Discovery World, the race site of the 2014 National Championships.  Registration didn't take too long, honestly the longest wait was the line to find out your race number, which probably could have been avoided all together if USAT just emailed those numbers out to the athletes the week leading up to the race.  After finding your race number it was back to another line to get your timing chip, race packet, and SWAG.  This year, all athletes received a race jacket along with a SweatVac Hat.  Both of these were surprisingly nice.  The females got a red jacket while the males got a blue and I'll be honest, I like the red jackets better.  After going through registration and packet pick-up, I headed over to the transition area for bike check-in.

The men's Super Sprint triathlon was just starting so they shut down the transition area until the Super Sprint race was completed.  This race was a professional level race with about 20-30 pros competing.  It consisted of a 325m swim, 4k bike, 1.5k run twice through.  While I waited for transition to open to rack my bike, I watched the Super Sprint race.  It was really exciting and FAST!  After the race was completed, I racked my bike, then walked through the race expo, and went back to the Zoo to pick up Sarah and the girls.  That night we stayed at a La Quinta Inn in Oak Creek, which is just Southwest of the Milwaukee Airport, about a 15 minute drive south of the race.  For dinner we found a Panara Bread and I had a flat bread sandwich with a side salad.  My parents shared a hotel room with us, as they came down to watch the race.  After dinner, we came back to the hotel room, prepared for the morning, watched the Packer's preseason game, and were all in bed around 8:30pm with a 4:15am wake up call.

That night, I slept like absolute CRAP.  I was so anxious, probably the most anxious I had been for a race.  This was the first ever race were I had very specific goals and literally a once in a lifetime opportunity.  This was the first time the USAT National Championships were in Milwaukee, and with the coincidence that the World Championships were in Chicago the following year makes the opportunity of not only qualifying for Team USA, but truly being able to race at the World Championships the following year, made this a true "win or go home" race.  I had put an immense amount of pressure on myself to succeed.  This pressure created an intense anxiousness in myself which kept me awake all night with random thoughts running through my mind all night.

After waking up (well before our 4:15am wake up call), I was feeling wide awake with excitement.  We packed up all of our stuff and got the girls ready and were out and on the rode right around 5:00am.  After getting to the race, I set up my transition area with the utmost care knowing that USAT Officials were patrolling the entire transition area just looking to hand out penalties for illegally set up transition areas.  After getting set up, I found a nice open space to sit and relax before jumping in the the water for a quick swim warm up.  Around 6:45 I met up with my family for a final good bye and good luck.  Around 7:00 I was in the water to get used to the water temperatures which were about 73*, if I recall correctly.  I spent about 15 minutes in the water swimming and just getting my nerves settled for the race before the National Anthem.  I was in the very first wave of the day and was scheduled to start at 7:30am sharp.

Nutrition Plan

My nutrition plan for this race was to NOT have a nutrition plan.  I opted to take two Peanut Butter Hammer Gels just before jumping in the water to have something in my stomach since the last time I ate was dinner the night before at Panara.  Prior to jumping in the water, I took 2 Race Caps Supreme, 2 Mito Caps, and 2 Anti-Fatigue Caps about 45 minutes prior to the start of my race.  I had no water bottles prepared for the bike and no gels or water bottles prepared for the run.  The only other supplement I had ready was a Energy Surge to suck on during the bike leg.

Gear/Equipment

Blue Seventy Reaction wetsuit from www.TheTriShop.com
Custom TYR Special Ops 2.0
Look 556
Giro Aero Helmet
Rydon Rudy Project Sunglasses
Louis Garneau Carbon Tri HRS Shoes
Zoot Kiawe 2.0 Shoes

750m Swim (12:11)

The swim started with an open water start, only my second ever true open water swim start, with the first being the Ironman.  The swim course was rather simple, swim straight out, go under a bridge, then make a U-turn to the right and swim to shore.  When planning out my race strategy back one year ago, I knew I would have to swim a sub 13 minute 750 in order to put up a sub 1:09 finish time.  My goal going into the race was to go balls-to-the-wall throughout the entire race and just hope not to blow up during the final mile of the run.  I found myself getting into a groove early on in the swim and latching on to a set of feet to draft off of.  At about the half way point I noticed I was inside of the main group of swimmers.  I was sighting the course well and really don't know why everyone else was 20 yards to my left.  I just continued to swim towards the other swim buoys as a lone fish, swimming all alone.  After getting to the turn buoys I knew there was only 200-300 meters to go and really started to pick up my swim cadence.  Once at the swim out ramp (which was extremely steep) I ran the nearly quarter mile to transition and got ready to hammer down on the bike.

12.4 Mile Bike (31:33)

After arriving into transition, I took of my wetsuit, which I will admit, I am slow at and really need to improve.  I threw on my helmet and bike shoes and in a last second decision, opted to put on my race bib now as opposed to T2 hoping to save some time at the end of the race.  My T2 time was 2:38, WAY TO FREAKIN SLOW!  I know I need to strip my wetsuit faster and I need to practice having my bike shoes clipped in to my bike right away as opposed to putting them on in transition and wasting precious seconds trying to get clipped in at the bike mount line.

Once I was on the bike, I just put the hammer down.  The course was a fast course and surprisingly scenic.  The course was a large loop course all on a single road.  It went strait North for about 4 miles before turning around to head South for about 8 before the second turnaround to head North again for another 4 miles back to transition.  The Southern end of the course was on a bridge that at the apex overlooked Lake Michigan and the Milwaukee Skyline.  It was really cool, even though it was a straight uphill climb.  The good or bad (depending on how you look at it) thing about a out and back style course, is you get to see exactly how far ahead or behind you are in the race.  Since I was in the very first wave of the day, I knew exactly were I stood in the field as I approached the first turn around point around mile 4.  I counted a good number of guys and honestly lost count around 20ish.  It was at that point were I knew I had my work cut out for me and would really have to put up a strong run.  I held my own pretty well on the bike and probably had a net position change of zero after being passed by roughly the same number of guys I had passed.

3.1 Mile Run (19:46)

Once I got into transition I threw on my shoes and was in and out pretty damn quick.  My T2 time was 00:58 which was the 99th fastest T2. This was probably the bright spot of my race.  Once out on the run course, knowing I needed a fast 5k, I tried to get into a groove as soon as possible.  I felt tired, like I really hammered down on the bike for 12.4 miles, but stayed focused on my goal.  I was passed by a couple guys but passed way more people then I was passed by.  After passing mile 2, I decided to crank it up a notch and truly leave it all out on the course.  I passed the last few guys that were in eye shot of me and soon I saw the finish line.  During the last tenth of a mile I was passed by one of the guys I passed at mile 2, I did my best to try and pass him, knowing that he may be the difference between Team USA and falling one spot short.  I never did catch him, but finished in 1:07:08, nearly two minutes faster then my goal time of a sub 1:09.  I even finished about a minute faster than my very ambitious goal of 1:08.  When looking at my mile splits I ran a 6:08 mile during the 3rd mile and a 4:52/mile pace during the final 1/10th of mile.  I was surprised to see these splits and it just affirms that I put it on the line and risked blowing up in this race.

Post Race

After the race I stuck around, not only because I had to wait for the last cyclist to exit T2 (roughly 11:00), but to find out how I placed and if I stood a chance to make Team USA.  As I sat and reflected on my race, I knew I did my best personally, I know I laid it on the line and doubted there was any area I could have been quicker (besides T1).  While I waited a while I saw the people at the NormaTech booth in the race expo to demo one of there recovery units.  It was AWESOME, it was like a cross between compression tights and a massage.  Now, if they didn't cost $1,600 I would have probably bought a pair on the spot.  While I was recovering with a pair of NormaTech sleeves, my dad got a print out of my race times.  I was unofficially 31st place in my age group.  Knowing this result I knew I most likely missed qualifying for Team USA by 6 spots.  I was bummed, I began thinking of where I fell short and what I could have done better.  I began questioning my race effort, could I have swam just a bit faster, or given more effort on the bike?  But then I looked at my race splits.  After the official race results were posted and all penalties were assessed, I finished 28th in my age group (of 114) and 188th overall (of 1,734).

Going into the race, I made ambitious goals for myself, knowing that in order to reach my goals, I would have to train hard and have a great race.  My goal splits were a sub 13 minute swim, sub 33 minute bike, and a sub 20 minute run.  Knowing my goal splits and comparing them to my race results, I nailed each of them independently and even reached my overall race goal of sub 1:08.  Sure, it sucks ass that I didn't qualify for Team USA, but this was literally the deepest field USAT has ever seen for the National Championships and some of the fastest Team USA qualification times.  It makes sense, though.  Think about it, the World Championships were going to be held within 90 miles of the National Championship.  Not only was the World Championship close to the National Championships, but it was going to be the first time in 10 years the World Championships were going to be held in the USA.  Considering all of this, it explains why so many people came out with the same goal as me, to qualify for Team USA and to be able to say they are one of the top triathletes in the country.

What's on Tap

There is still hope for me to claim a spot on Team USA for 2015, however.  There is what is known as the roll down, in races with qualifying standards.  Basically, if someone were to turn down their spot on Team USA, it would roll down to the next finisher.  So, all I would need is for 3 people to turn down there spot on Team USA and I would be offered a spot on the team and an opportunity to race for Team USA in Chicago in 2015.  Part of me thinks this would be a "cheap" way of getting on the team, while the other part of me thinks that any opportunity to be on the team is an accomplishment.  Either way, I will know that I didn't truly qualify for the team based on the qualification standards, but came damn close....and I am honestly happy with that.  I gave it my all - and I am not disappointing in anyway with my race, just that I didn't claim a qualifying spot on Team USA. 

Moving forward for the year, with my triathlon season officially in the rear-view, I am now focusing again on the marathon.  I will never give up on my goal of running a sub 3 hour marathon.  I am following a strict training plan over the next two months leading up to the Whistle Stop Marathon in Ashland, WI on October 11th.  The plan has strict paces for each individual run with a projected marathon time of 2:55.  The course is a point to point race on a crushed limestone trail along Lake Superior in the upper Northwest corner of Wisconsin.  The course is primarily downhill and claims to be fast.  The hope is to train even harder for the marathon then in the past and focus solely on my run fitness over the next two months.  I have even started to grow my marathon beard for the extra ergogenic effects of facial hair!