Hunter Mountain 70.3 race report

Last weekend marked my last “real” race of 2013. It was a half ironman race in the Catskills of New York and was by far the hardest course I have raced all year, maybe ever. Overall the race went ok, which means I produced a good result but not the result I had in mind. I knew from looking at previous year’s results that the field size (100 or so athletes) would be small and that the winning time would be within reach of my abilities. Having my half iron pr sitting at 4:41 and with last year’s winner clocking a 4:46, it would be close but not out of reach. What I didn’t account for was what amounted to not only a tough course, but tough weather conditions and an overall lack of motivation. Saying I lacked motivation doesn’t mean I could have gone any faster or didn’t put it all out there. But let’s just say that had the race been cancelled due to any number of reasons I wouldn’t have cared much either way. The last few months have been a real grind in training and not going fast enough to get the world championship slot at Timberman still leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. Having the right mind set when you toe the line is key and this being a smaller event with no real reward for a stellar performance I just lacked the necessary fire.

With that aside I still went out there and did what I do, which is to say I am nothing if not predictable and consistent. I swam what I normally do for a 1.2 mile open water race, I rode the exact heart rate that produced 2:30ish bike splits at my other races this season, and I ran low 7 min/mile pace for a majority of the run. However with the course profile being hillier than any half iron distance I have done before (this was number 12) the overall times it produced would be slower.

Being a smaller race participant wise I had asked Amy to give me splits and positioning when she could. Normally in a large race with wave starts this isn’t really possible or even that practical. This was a mass start race for both the half and full ironman though so knowing where I stood allowed me to really race the distance. The swim was a two loop swim which for a half iron is kind of unusual. The water temp was also reported to be 62 degrees which anyone who does triathlons regularly knows that they always fluff that number to put people at ease. Regardless, it was cold so I went with double swim caps and luckily had worn my full sleeve wetsuit instead of my sleeveless.

The last time I did a two loop swim was at Lake Placid two years ago and that hadn’t gone so hot. The two loop format means that you come out of the water and have to run 50 yards or so along the beach before jumping back in. As I came out after the first loop I looked at my watch and saw 18 mins and change and Amy told me I was in 13th place. That was right about where I thought I would be both time and place wise. One more lap, pretty much swimming solo but staying dead on course and I was out of the water in just under 34 mins. I quickly looked around for Amy and she said I was now 18th out of the water. Considering I could see 5 or 6 people right around me and seeing a few more in transition I was happy with my position and time.

With the cold water temps, air temps in the low 50’s and a good stiff breeze I opted to throw on a long sleeve in T-1 to attempt to stay warm. Other than that transition went smoothly and I hopped on the bike and was off with relative ease. Just as we came out of transisiton is about where I realized this course was going to be as difficult as any I had previously done. The climb out of transition was a mix of standing up hammering the pedals and being in the lowest gear and trying to keep my cadence high. The climb was a good mile long but just as we exited the park it dropped off and became a nice fast downhill where all the lost time got made up. In races of this length you almost always have to deal with roads being open to traffic and this race was no different. Lucky for us being a Saturday in a fairly remote part of NY, and the roads having large shoulders this never really presented a problem. Not having done much research on the actual bike course elevation and the website touting a “athlete friendly” course I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. The 28 mile ride out to the turn around was fast, and I kept a good cadence and was not affected by the occasional wind gusts.

I hit the turnaround averaging around 23 mph (1:10ish) and feeling good that a 2:30 would be the bike time on the day. There was a small bump out to hit the turn and then we headed back on to the main road and the climb back towards the park. This is when that 23 mph, comfortable cadence ride became a grind. The winds picked up and with every gust I regretted riding the rear disc wheel. Being aero wasn’t helping so sitting up and grinding it out became the norm for the entire return back. Overall the course ended up having about 700ft more elevation gain than Rev3 Quassy which many regard as the hardest half iron course anywhere. My final split came in at 2:41 which considering the amount of climbing was a solid ride. As I rode the fast descent back into the park, I knew I was 8th or 9th into T-2. Knowing 1st was well out of reach and having dead legs from a tough bike course I wasn’t really sure how the run was going to play out.

As I hurried through transition I noticed one of the guys I came in with was part of a relay so that took him off the board. As I crossed the timing mats and headed out I passed another guy who was not looking like he had good run legs so that gave me the confidence to pick up the pace and make the strong pass. One thing I have learned this season racing in the elite division and towards the pointy end of races is to play the mental game. If you are going to make a pass make it a strong one and no matter how you are feeling make the other guy think he can’t hold your pace. I’ve found this also is a subtle way of pumping your own tires and giving you the motivation to keep pushing. Now I was running in 7th place and with a two loop run course I knew I would have a chance to see those ahead of me. Within the first 3 miles I was able to overtake two other runners and now I was sitting solidly in 5th place. With the out and back course and doing the math in my head I pretty much knew a podium spot was not going to be in the cards. As I made the turn at the 6 mile mark I heard the foot steps of the 6th place male. Not wanting to look back I just tried to look strong and keep the mental game going. As he made the pass I encouraged him to hunt down 3rd and he gapped me by about 25 yards. I could tell he was a strong runner and had a good amount left in the tank and would eventually pull away. That didn’t mean I was going to go down with out a fight. I was able to keep him in my sights for the next 3 miles but just wasn’t able to bridge the gap. Eventually he put the hammer down and put me in his rear view. Meanwhile apparently we both had passed the 3rd place male as he was in the porta john.

When all was said and done I crossed the line in 5th place in a total time of 5:01 and the overall victory in my age group. I had emptied the tank and with a run course that again had more elevation gain than the notorious Quassy course my legs were spent. Initially I was a little disappointed with my overall time but looking back at how slow times were across the board I came to realize that my 5:01 was probably my standard 4:4x on a easier course. At the end of the day you swim, bike and run the same distance as the other competitors so overall times really don’t have much meaning. Having just missed my goal of a podium slot but having been aggressive throughout the race I was able to be happy with the performance.

Racing Elite

This weekend at the Duxbury sprint triathlon will mark the 3rd time I line up in the elite wave for a triathlon. Some people would look at this and say I have no business in the elite wave if I don't have a legitimate shot of winning or placing. I however would respectfully disagree, however not without a little trepidation. See every time I register for one of these races as an elite I question the validity of it myself. Am I an elite triathlete according to USAT rules? No. Are my current times ever going to net me the overall victory? Unlikely. So why then have I, and will I continue to register for elite waves if allowed to do so by local race directors?

I have grappled with this question and truth be told I've come real close to emailing the race director all 3 times to have my name thrown back into the age group pool prior to race day. I never end up hitting that send button though and here is why. Like I mentioned before my times aren't going to net me a overall victory or even likely to put me on the overall podium....yet. However my times do almost always guarantee me a podium slot in my age group. So the question becomes am I there to race the best or is it about getting an award for my efforts. Does it mean the same to me if I come first in my age group but finish in 20th place overall? Now of course its not like I can just show up and win my age group, I need to bust my ass to get one of those 3 spots. But truth be told while it's great for the ego to win or place in your age group especially one as competitive as mine, the reason I race is to get better. So when I register as an elite I almost always finish dead last. And every time I go back and look at the results, and see I would have won my age group and have a tiny bit of regret that I didn't race age group. Then I start to think about why I register for these races.

I sign up many months in advance, not knowing who is going to be racing with the sole intention of coming as close to first place overall as my training will allow. I don't show up just to finish like I did when I first started out. Now when I race it's to be the fastest I possibly can be on race day regardless of who I am racing against. While some might think it is foolish to put myself out there to get slaughtered, I view it as an apprenticeship of sorts. You learn from these guys and girls how to be the best athlete on race day. From the moment the season starts, until the gun goes off on race day, I need to conduct myself as an elite. If I start to slack in training, it becomes a subtle reminder that I hold myself to a higher standard. Is it a huge shot to my ego to finish back of the pack? Sure. However every time I get knocked down a peg it makes me want it even more. I am never going to be an Olympic caliber athlete, but I can be a quality elite athlete if I continue to train and race with everything I have. My ego is big enough as it is, I certainly don't need a $2 dollar medal that says I won my age group but finished 15th overall to validate it. What I need is a good old fashion ass kicking and to measure myself against the best at every race. If that means I finish 10 out of 10 in the elites then so be it.

I am still fairly new to this sport and I think there is still a lot of room for improvement. I race and train with a chip on my shoulder, always have, always will. So getting my but handed to me at these races insures I don't take my foot off the gas when it comes to all things triathlon. Everything matters, from training, daily nutrition, rest and recovery, to race day execution. All the little things add up and if I train and race with that elite mindset I can only improve and get better. No one knows what is going to happen on race day, certainly not me. Maybe the guy that crushed it last year hasn't trained as hard or as well as me. Maybe I nip him at the line or put him away early on the bike. Those possibilities always loom anytime you toe the line. And for me I like it when I am backed into the corner and having nothing to lose. Put me on the start line and give me a shot. So come Saturday I get to measure myself against the best and see how I stack up.

"It's part of the triathlete's psyche, you really want to test the boundry. You want to get to the edge and look over it to find out where it is. Sometimes you don't know where it is until you have stepped over it." -Craig Alexander, 3x Hawaii Ironman Champion

Team Spencer

When it comes to racing and triathlon in particular, this sport is not a solitary one for me but a team game. From the training partners who keep pushing me to go faster, my competitors who set the bar high and make me want to beat them, and most importantly those at home who come to the races to support me and cheer me on. As many of you know Team Spencer will be adding a new member this July. This newest little addition to the team will have the biggest impact yet on when, if, and where I will be racing for the foreseeable future.

Since starting in the sport Amy and I have always sat down in early January and mapped out my season. She has just as much say as to where and when I race as I do and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Without her support both on and off the race course none of what I do would mean very much. In 4 years I have raced over 60 different events from 5K’s to Ironmans and she has been at nearly all of them. The few she has missed, I found myself on the podium each time (maybe she should stay home…hmmm) and truthfully it just didn’t have the same feeling. Sure it was great to do well in the race but without someone there to cheer you on it certainly wasn’t as enjoyable.

Now Team Spencer will have a new voice when it comes to racing, and I couldn’t be happier. I am excited for the challenge of starting a family all the while continuing to do something I love in the process. A huge part of being successful in triathlon is having a healthy life balance. Managing our new life with this sport will certainly be the hardest challenge yet, but it is something I am looking forward to. Deep down we all race for selfish reasons, however having those two girls with me will make all the hard work and sacrifice worth it.

Baby Spencer maybe quiet right now but she already has made her first statement when it comes to my race schedule. As many of you know I was registered to race Ironman Lake Placid on July 28th, however with a due date of July 17th the newest member of the team had other plans. While I love and can be borderline obsessed with this sport, I still have my priorities straight and I am pretty sure Amy doesn’t want to give birth in the transition tent of an Ironman. So once the race was off the schedule I looked elsewhere for an Ironman that fit the schedule. Amy made it clear that if I wanted to race post baby she would support me. However like I said, my priorities are in order and I didn’t want to have any added stress in the first few months.

I did however find a Ironman that was 3 weeks prior to the due date and was close (Lake George) enough to be reasonable. Well as the training and subsequent planning took shape it became apparent that logistically this just wasn’t a good fit for the team once again. The beauty of having endless support at home means making these decisions are easy. I know my wife and had I truly wanted to do either of these races bad enough we would have made it work. That is why the Team works. I support her and she supports me and without saying much we trust each other to make the right decisions at the right times.

After a very easy decision to step away from the Iron distance for this season and maybe next as well I am excited to focus on the half iron distance, and try my hand at qualifying for the 70.3 world championships. This will be no easy task and knowing that I don’t excel at one particular sport over another I will have to put together a solid race across all 3 sports. Never one to lack confidence I know I can do it and am willing to take the steps necessary to achieve that goal. Excited is not even a strong enough word to describe how pumped I am to push my self at this distance and see how fast I can go. I feel I am capable of having enough speed to qualify for 70.3 worlds now (whereas I am not nearly fast enough at 140.6) and that has reinvigorated my training. So with Team Spencer on board and on the way, the new schedule locked in (for now) and my training being pushed to new levels I can’t wait to see what happens.

To train or race, that is the question.

Plain and simple, I like to race. I’m a competitive person and I love the challenge of race day and everything that comes with it. All the long hours of training finally pay off and you get to reap the rewards of all your hard work. It’s why I got into triathlon in the first place, and it is why I continue to train my ass off day in and day out. Heading to a race with that nervous pit in your stomach, not knowing whether you will succeed or fail is for me the best feeling.

Conversely training is essentially the opposite of racing. There are no medals, no aid stations and no spectators. It’s just you and your thoughts, in the pool and on the roads for hours on end. What get’s you through those training sessions are the races that loom in the distance. Don’t train hard enough, with the right intensity, or not enough and your race results will suffer. Knowing that every time you head out for a swim, bike or run that you are doing it for a reason makes the daily grind of training worth it.

However it always has been and always will be about race day. And as you make the transition to half and full ironmans, racing often will end up taking a back seat to training. For the first few years after making the switch to longer distance races this really didn’t suit me. After all, the reason I did this stuff was to get out there and challenge my self against my competitors. As I have grown in the sport however, I’ve come to learn the value of a quality training session over a race. In fact a good day of training for ironman can be just as rewarding as a race.

You see it so often with people whom are starting out in this sport. They fill their summer weekends with race after race, and never truly “peak” for that one big race. Truthfully this isn’t always a bad thing. They end up gaining a lot of valuable race experience and truly learn to love the sport. And as they age in the sport and take their goals to the next level it becomes a very seamless transition to training over racing. That is where I find myself.

The urge to race every weekend will probably always be there for me, that is who I am. But I have also learned to love training, and how valuable it can be to a peak performance on race day. After all isn’t that one perfect race what we are all seeking? Sure I could go out and punch the clock at a ton of different races and have a blast in doing so. But somewhere deep inside I would always wonder, was it the best I could have done? So as the training log fills with hour after hour and the big races seem so far away, I take solace in the fact that racing less, training more and focusing on trying to achieve that one peak performance is all worth it.

The HITS project

“A ship in the harbor is safe. But that’s not what ships are built for”

The HITS project was commissioned in Jan of 2013. Originally it was known as Ironman Lake Placid “Redemption”. However as the project took shape it was decided that Ironman Lake Placid would not be feasible thus the HITS project was formed. It was determined that countless hours of training would be needed to have the project be deemed a success. From January until the completion of the project on June 29th nothing else would be as significant as the successful completion of the project.

The HITS project may as well be a top secret mission. It will have no fan fair, no great measure of success and even fewer people there to witness it as it ends. It will not be on par with Red Bull Stratos or have movies made about it like Zero Dark Thirty. What the HITS project is and or will become is a solo endeavor to see how fast I can do an Ironman. The distances will remain the same, 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, and a 26.2 mile run. The clock will start when I enter the water and it will end when I cross the finish line. What happens between those two points not many will know about.

Unlike major Ironman races I have done in the past, their will be no online tracking and no great amount of spectators. The amount of aid stations on the course will be limited, and contain only the bare essentials. And the number of other participants will likely not be more than 50. It will be me against the course, one on one for 140.6 miles.

Ordinarily training for a Ironman is a very lonely endeavor in and of itself. You get up early to head to the pool and swim while others sleep in. You ride your bike endlessly hoping to get just a few minutes faster over the course of a bike ride that last hours. Finally you relentlessly destroy your knees and back by running 50+ miles a week in search of that perfect marathon time. Countless hours spent training alone with no spectators, and no medal around your neck when you finish. Just you and a clock for 15+ hours a week in search of every last ounce of speed you can bring to the race.

Tomorrow the alarm will go off at 4:30am and I will go downstairs to ride my bike for 2 hours before work, and prior to the sun rising. No one will know about this, and no one will care. The reasons for these early morning training sessions will be to gain a level of fitness the likes of which I have never reached. The main goal to be faster than the last time I did Ironman. I will train to beat a man or woman that I have never met and will likely never see again. It will be a purely selfish endeavor. It will all be in pursuit of making the HITS project a success.

Check your ego at the door

“If you want to be a champion, you've got to feel like one, you've got to act like one, you've got to look like one.”-Red Auerbach

This past weekend my triathlon team hosted their 12^th annual indoor time trial aka “Sufferfest”. For those not familiar with a indoor time trial, you hook your bike up to a computer and ride a predetermined 9.3 mile course against the clock. It’s the biking equivalent of running a all out 5K road race. It sucks, it hurts and to say the least it is very humbling for a guy like me. Being a tight knit team there is always a lot of smack talk flying around pre and post race. Believe me when I say it almost always gets backed up as well. These guys can ride bikes, and over the years it has been what the team has been known for.

Being the “new” guy on the team and being fairly new to the sport in general these types of events are real ego busters. The old adage that no matter how good you are, there is always someone better out there, applies to this event. And despite getting my ass handed to me, this is exactly what I and a lot of other athletes need this time of year. As the long winter starts taking its toll, and those of us who love to compete and race are stuck indoors training, this is one that gets circled on the calendar.

As athletes we all have healthy egos; however the difference becomes how much of that ego you choose to reveal. Some athletes wear their ego on their sleeves for all to see and get labeled cocky. Others just quietly go about their business knowing what they are capable of but preferring to remain quiet and humble. Having an ego, however you express it, is an essential part of the makeup of a champion. To add to Red’s quote I also think you need to not only act, look and feel like a champion but you need to surround yourself with them. So going into the lions den that is the Team Psycho time trial is just what makes us all raise our game and become better athletes.

Larry Bird, one of Auerbach’s favorite players was famous for being outwardly cocky. Once during the three-point shooting contest on All-Star Weekend in 1986, Bird entered the locker room, looked around without saying a word, then finally said, "I want all of you to know I am winning this thing. I'm just looking around to see who's gonna finish up second." He won the shooting contest.

So while I made no bold declarations this year, ala Larry Legend I did get to feed my competitive urges which hopefully will keep me motivated until race season. I’ve always said that I would rather be the worst athlete on the best team, then the best athlete on the worst team and Team Psycho is just that for me. So maybe in a few years I will bust out a little cockiness and make some people worry, but for now I will be keeping my mouth shut and taking my beatings.

Great achievement comes from great sacrifice

We all know that in order to reach our goals many great sacrifices have to be made. As I embark on my fifth year in triathlon I am reminded of that everyday. From 5am wakeups to swim endless laps, riding endless hours on my bike, hammering mile after mile on pavement, these are the things that it takes to be better than the next guy come race day. As I have gotten better at these things, one quickly realizes that it doesn’t get any easier. In fact, in order to continue improving and reach the goals I have set for myself, it will take even greater sacrifice and commitment.

I wasn’t blessed with a ton athletically; however one thing I do possess is the mental capacity to keep going when others give up. No matter what it takes, whatever time I have to get up, however many hours I have to put in to reach my goal, I will do it. As a new season begins and I inch closer to my long term goals in this sport, I realize that the commitment that it took to reach last years goals will not be good enough. With each new season the sacrifices will become greater. Greater commitments will have to be made. And the training hours will get longer. I am prepared for that and know that if I stay the course I have a real shot at reaching my goals.

Last season I set the bar pretty high for myself and I was able to accomplish what I set out to do. This year however is one in which my only goal is to continue to learn and get valuable Ironman experience. Their will be no time goals I am chasing, no new race distances I will attempt. Plain and simple this year will be about getting better in all 3 sports. Hopefully that will still include a few pr’s along the way and solid placements in my age group. However, the true success of this season, will not be revealed until many years from now.

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated failures. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”
Calvin Coolidge