After my last sprint race, I pulled a calf muscle as described in previous posts. I stopped running for about 4 weeks to let it heal but then as I eased back into it, I stepped on some uneven terrain and re-injured the day before spending nearly 25 hours in the sitting position on airplanes headed toward Poland – less than ideal for an injury that needs elevation and stretching. At this point I also realized I have only 8 weeks to recover and train before my first 70.3 distance race.
For this fact, coach and I decided running the 10k of the international distance race was too risky; not enough time to heal since the last incident and if it locks up again, there won’t be enough time to recover before the Chula Vista Half. So, I instead entered the Aquabike event.
This is the same race; 1k swim, 30k bike… but then the race is over, no 10k run. Pretty ideal for my injury situation and a race category I could get used to, if it didn’t feel so much like a copout. It allowed me to push a little harder in the swim and really hammer the bike because I didn’t have to save anything for the run.
There was a lot less to think about in prepping transition, swim to bike is easy, but because of parking and tired kids that I woke up to bring with me, I arrived late and was crunched on time before getting booted out of the bike rack area. In spite of my frantic rush, I still got everything squared away and even caught up with an old friend.
The swim was ideal; water temperature was perfect, surface was calm, there was enough room to maneuver around crowds and slower swimmers. My spotting was on point, lines as straight as I’ve ever swam and only deviations were caused by other swimmers. This all led to a swim PR; 1000 meters in 14:58, well below my best race pace of 1:34 per 100 yards – and that was at half the distance.
Transition was a little clunky, but about average for me. Smooth mount on the bike and I was off. The only transition issue I had was after slipping my feet into my shoes, I accidentally pulled on the wrong end of the right shoe strap and pulled it all the way out of the fold-over loop. I cinched the left one down and kept pedaling until I could find a flat or downhill where I could re-loop the open strap. Unfortunately, the first several miles of the bike course is all uphill, so I had to wait awhile, but I don’t think it slowed me down much. Rolling hills are kind of my jam; I crushed the climbs and was more comfortable than usual on the descents. I usually tend to feel sketchy on a downhill and engage the brakes at about 35mph. This time I actually ran out of gears and got up over 40mph without even coming off the aero bars. I finished the 30k route in 48:42, normalized power was about 240 watts.
The finish was anticlimactic. After I dismounted and crossed the timing mats, I strolled into transition, put away my helmet, towel changed out of my kit, dropped off my timing chip and got on a shuttle bus with my family headed to the real finish line to see my results and cheer on some teammates.
There were only two age group divisions for the aquabike, 13-49 and 50+. I finished 2nd in my age group and 5th overall. This means that the 4 men who were (significantly) faster than me in this event were all at least 10 years older than me (actually between 11 and 22 years older – top 4 finishers respective ages 49, 58, 56, 66). At first, the realization was discouraging, but quickly turned inspiring. I realized I’ve still got many good years to improve on my performance, compete at high levels, and reach new goals.
