Tri-State Super Spartan 2015

Ok, so it's not a triathlon, but it's a race and and it's fitness related and I've done a Tough Mudder report, so I'm gonna give a rundown of this weekend's Spartan Race.

I'd never done a Spartan before so I didn't really know what to expect. I had heard through others that it was more competitive than a Mudder, and I had done some light research into the different obstacles, but other than that, I was going in without expectations.

Training for the Spartan was fairly limited. Since my last big triathlon, I've been trying to do more of Crossfit-style workouts, incorporating strength and high intensity interval sessions (HIITS). Oh and lots of burpees and pullups. The burpees would prove to be quite important.

I registered for the Spartan Super well in advance. A few days before the event we got our bib numbers and exact wave start time. I signed up for the Sunday event, so on the morning of, I drove down to Vernon, NJ, particularly enjoying the fact that I drove through a town called Sparta.
After taking a short provided shuttle for the parking lot to race venue, I picked up my race packet, which included a numbered headband (the Spartan equivalent of a race bib), along with various wrist bands.
The event grounds were very festive, with a nice handful of vendors, sponsors, bag check, and a fairly large warmup area that included a few ropes, and mini jungle gym to jump on, pull up, or otherwise prepare for the race.

My 8:30 wave started almost exactly on time. Obviously, you had to climb a 5 foot wall in order to get into the start coral, and we were off....straight up a ski slope. The first few miles were really quite slow, being very hilly. Hills would be one of the biggest challenges of the day.

For the most part, I found that the obstacles were pretty easy. Here's what I remember and how I did;

1. Hurdles - what they sound like. maybe 5 foot high walls to climb over. Nothing exciting
2. Inverted wall - a wall angle towards you. Options are to jump and pull yourself over, or somehow climb up the "rungs" underneath. I went for the former route.
3. Cargo Net climbs - again, what it sounds like. The tip I found was to try to stay on a vertical rope line as much as possible to avoid sagging and swinging. It seemed to work well.
4. Swim - bit of a misnomer. Was really a very short wade through a stream.
5. Slip Wall - a slippery sloped wall with a rope to pull on. Trick was to stay straight and feet firmly planted. No problems with this one.
6. Barbed wire crawls - there was a short on about halfway, and a long stretch right at the end. I loved this one. I rolled most of it, and spider-crawled the rest. Not challenging per se, but strenuous nonetheless
   
7. Atlas stone - pick up a small boulder and move it over 30 feet. I couldn't get much of a grip, and when I finally got it in the air, I also got a cramp. I opted against a second try here.
8. Sandbag / bucket brigade / wood block carries - these events were straightforward. Take a heavy object, lug it uphill, plop it down for the next sucker. Physically difficult, mostly due to the incline/decline than the weight itself,
9. Rope Climb - climb to the top of a rope, hit a cowbell, climb back down. was made more difficult because you had to start in water. You can probably try to just muscle it up, but better way is to use a rope climbing technique called a J-hook. Look it up. It works.
   
10. Monkey bar and multi bar - I failed on both of these. The monkey bars were farther apart than i anticipated, and slightly wet. Same goes for the multi-bar, which started with having to swing from ring to ring. I'll be working on this for next time.
11. Spear throw - throw a spear at a target. If you miss, do 30 burpees. Yeah I missed. Burpees sucked.
12. Sandbag hoist - using a ropes and pulley, hoist a sandbag a nice amount into the air. Most of us ended up on the floor using nearby gate as an anchor point. It had also rained recently making the damn things heavy as hell.
13. Fire Jump - more of a cool photo op than obstacle. Get a running start and leap over flaming and smoking logs. And don't forget to smile at the camera (or scowl like me ).
    

All these obstacles aside, I found that most of the race was really just a long trail run, mixed in with some hiking. Trail runners definitely have an advantage on this type of race, at least at this venue. Covering the 8 miles quickly and efficiently helps cut down your time, and the obstacles only occasionally require a large amount of upper body strength.

I definitely had fun, and would love to go for the Trifecta, which is when you do all 3 distances of Spartan Race in a single calendar year. Sure it's a marketing gimmick, but its a good one!

After finishing you get your medal which includes a trifecta piece, there is hoses set up to clean off. I dubbed this the shower-orgy because...well... look. 

You also get a free beer, which is always nice!

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Jersey City Triathlon 2015 Race Recap

It's race report time! Can i just write "fiasco" and call it a day? Blech....ok here goes anyways.

Yesterday was the inaugural Jersey City Sprint and Olympic Distance triathlon. To me, it was appealing mostly because I generally enjoy the "wham-bam" nature of sprint distance races, and because it was so close to home. So I signed up, and challenged my buddy Zach to do the same. I know he's a fast guy, but I figured I could give him a run for his money.

Leading up to the race, it was becoming a little apparent that was some .... "disorganization" . The race director had evidently only gotten the required permits a month before the race, and the website is rudimentary at best. The swim location changed just a couple days before the race itself, and some details were unclear.

Race morning

Registration and Packet pickuup

Thought packet pickup was available Saturday, I opted to just do so on race morning. With pickup and Transition beginning around 5:30AM, I was there by 6AM, easily found parking just a couple blocks away, and walked my bike over. Pickup was fairly orderly, but here we ran into disorganization point #1; not enough Medium shirts. Considering shirt size is a field to input when registering, I don't see why they would run out of the needed size. I ended up with a Large. Now...no offense to all my Athena and Clydesdal friends out there, but I'm not a Large anymore, and wearing a Large just looks silly on my. The timing chip was also this massive anklet instead of the usual chip/velcro, but that's just the technology being used, so not really the fault of the race staff.

Transition was a fun mess as well. Rows were marked every 7 feet or so, but not for each bike, so some racks ended up very crowded, and nobody really knew which way to have the bike facing. Race officials were walking around trying to help organize, and along the way I ended up in a discussion with one as I heard her going over the rules with a first-timer. "The smaller sticker goes on your swim-cap". Wait...WHAT?!  So we are supposed to put the sticker on the neoprene cap, NOT the helmet like every other race in existence? I tried to explain that this really didn't make sense to me since it would come off quickly in the the water, but she was adamant that that's the way the race guide said to do it, so that's the way it had to be. Fine, I'll do it, but I'm chalking that up as disorganization pint #2.

Swim start was about a quarter mile away from transition, so we all made our way over. The officials there tried to organize everyone, but nobody really knew the swim course well enough to go over it with the athletes (Disorg point). We mostly stood around until the race director came by to talk to us, In the end we started maybe 10 minutes late. Olympic athletes first, then sprint, Male followed by Female for both. The swim wasn't really the worst layout, Personally, I haven't swim trained in 2 months, so my swim sucked, but that's totally my fault and problem. My second mistake...not starting my watch for the first ten minutes or so. According to the timing people, I finished the 750M swim in 21:52. Crappy, but I knew I'd be slow. I had shoes ready for me, so I stripped my wetsuit and ran the 1/4 mile back. 

T1 - Crap Crap Crap Crap

Got to my bike a little winded from the run there, but quickly got on my cycling shoes, helmet, and sunglasses, grabbed my bike and made my way to Bike-Out. But on the way I saw I had a rear flat. I called out for bike tech support, but there was none (disorg. point!) . After a minute or two, one race staff member called me over and met me with a pump, but was told it was broken (DP!). Looking around and still not seeing any tech support around, I decided to just fix the flat myself. I got out my tools, took off my wheel, stripped the tube, and then turned to smile at the race photographer, who apparently thought that my mishap would make for a good photo-op. Now this is entirely my fault as well, but I've never actually used the CO2 inflater, so I messed that up. I ran back into Transition looking for any bike pumps that I could "borrow". I eventually saw one, but my tube wasn't holding air. Finally, bike tech arrived and helped me properly inflate my new tube, and I was back in the game. 

This pretty sums up my race.

T1 Time: 19:43

Bike

I kind of figured that at this point I wasn't going to catch up, so I decided to just treat it as a training day that I haven't really been able to have lately. The course ran partially through downtown Jersey City, complete with light rail tracks, plenty of potholes, and generally not so great road conditions.

Overall, fairly uneventful. I rode along, occasionally pushing a little but not going all out by any means. At one point, I saw a women 100 yards ahead of me wipe out after getting caught in a light rail track, so I stopped to offer any help, but she was up and walking, though visibly in pain. There wasn't anything I could really do, and she told me just keep going. After ensuring that there wasn't anything I could help with, I got moving again. Oh, and just to add a personal fiasco point, in my rush to change my tube, I had knocked my cadence/speed sensor out of alignment, so for the first 15 minutes or so my watch was constantly auto-pausing and resuming, until I managed to nudge it into proper place with my foot. This means I also had no way to really gauge how much farther I had to ride.

Bike Time: 50:50

T2 + Run - Too little too late

Now, I love the run portion of a Sprint race. I'm not super speedy over a long-course, but I can usually haul ass for at least a little bit. I got through T2 as quickly as I could after searching for my stuff (apparently other athletes had not racked their bikes properly, making it more difficult to find my own spot), My T2 time is for some reason not officially posted, but my watch has it at roughly 1:33. 

The run course was mostly out on the nearby streets. Weird disorganization point, the run was not closed to traffic. It was monitored by police sure, by runners were still getting passed by moving cars, making for an interesting and potentially unsafe situation. I was making good time, with my pace somewhere in the 7min/miles. I had opted not to bother wearing a HR monitor, since I figured I would just red-line the whole race so I went by feel. Approaching the finish line and Transition, I took a look at my watch and thought there must be a mistake, since I was only at a little over 2 miles. Turns out we had to actually run PAST the finish line, and back out on the quarter mile run to where Swim start was. From there, we had to do a couple extra loops and out-and-backs which the directors obviously threw in just to cover the distance. From the athlete perspective, this was stupid and annoying. I'm calling these disorganization points #24-25.

The quarter mile run back I tried to pick up the pace even more, and finish strong. I crossed the finish line, got my medal, and it was done. 

Run time:  Officially 24:31, but I've got 23:34 on my watch. I don't really know how to account for the full minute difference but I'll take a look at my GPS data later.

Post-Race food consisted of bagels and coffee... Yup that's about it. Honestly for such a small event, i don't really need a full spread, but I guess I'm used to local events having more local food sponsorship. Water bottles were also available, but it was getting pretty hot and the water was lukewarm. Not exactly desirable at the end of a race, but still welcome. 

Total Race time 1:56

What's really frustrating is that the race was so small, that if I had raced the same time, and NOT had to deal with my tire, I would have gotten on my AG podium for my first time ever. But alas it was not to be. Oh and Zach, he decided to blow his legs on a bike threshold testing the day before, so he decided to skip the race. At the very least...this means I beat him. So there's that. 

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I Finished My A race of the Season... Now What?

"Joe Shmoe...YOU ARE AN IRONMAN!"

These are the words that most long-distance triathletes want to hear. Or at least something fairly similar. We've trained for months, often in the winter while cowering on trainers watching Netflix because of the weather. We've drag our asses out of bed at 4 something in the morning to head to the pool, jump into the freezing cold water, and bang out a workout. We went through enough running shoes to put a post-Spartan race donation pile to shame. We've eaten right 80% of the time, and snuck in a few Oreo's during the other 20%, because that's what our coach told us we need to do in order to hit our goals. Yup....we've done all the work, we went to the race, and regardless of how the big day went, it's now over. We've drank our victory beer. Uhhh...ok beers.

The A race is over.

ALMOST DONE!!!!!

This is a "problem" that I'm going through right now. I finished my big race for the season and now I don't know what to do. I took a week off from training altogether. I ate some stuff that I normally wouldn't have, let myself be lazy, and got my wife to put loads of aloe vera on my insane sunburns.

I don't have any more races planned this season. Due to family commitments (I'm becoming a daddy in like...a few days maybe!), I haven't committed to any more races this season. So the big question is; Why should I keep training?

To be honest, I hated my week off. I loved training because it gave me something to work towards. It gave me a goal and a finish line and a reason to wake up before the rest of the "normal" world. It let me eat absurd amounts of food, and laugh at my MyFitnessPal daily balance of needing to somehow cram in an extra couple thousand calories each day. Damnit, I like to sweat! Pretty much the only thing I don't like about it is not having as much time to spend with my family. Oh, and the laundry. Oh god, that laundry just never ended.

Truth.

I've started "training" again after my week off. My workouts aren't quite as structured, and I'm trying to fit in more crosstraining. At least for the time being, I'm staying away from my typical triathlon training schedule, because I can. But the important thing for me is that I train. I didn't get into triathlon just to be able to say that I did it. I got into it for the medals baby!!!  Joking...I got into triathlon because I love feeling healthy, and it's constantly an awesome challenge. And yeah, ok, also the medals. Just because my race schedule is a little more in flux than I enjoy, why should that stop me from training? I'm gonna keep training, and when I find myself with enough time, money, and bravery to sign up for another A race, I'll get back into my normal schedule.

So what do you do after your race? Do you sit back on the couch, or get right back on the saddle? Let me know, and as always...

Keep Tri-ing!

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Eagleman 70.3 2015 Race Report

Sweet medal. Photo credit to http://www.yousignedupforwhat.com/

Half Ironman number 3 is in the books! It was a crazy hot race weekend, but definitely a fun one. Here's how it went down;

Check-in and weekend buildup

Located in Cambridge, Maryland's Sailwinds Park, athlete village was tucked away into what seemed like a pretty small area, complete with the usual retailers and massive Ironman store. Check-in was held in the park center gym (?). I got there Friday afternoon when things were pretty quiet, so my check-in was really quick and painless. I hit the store to give WTC some more of my money, because the hundreds of dollars on registration just want enough.

In terms of accommodations, there aren't so many hotels in the area, and things get booked very quickly. By the time that I registered in January, everything was gone. An option that came up was to rent this awesome house about 15 minutes from transition, that slept up to 18 people. I spent a few months posting on different Facebook pages gathering stranded athletes, and so this weekend we held The Real World; Eagleman. Honestly, it was awesome having athletes from all across the country to hang out and share stories with.

Yuuup...sure beats a hotel room

Hung out in the pool over the weekend,

View from the back

Riverbank beach walkway.

Race Morning

Just a typical triathlon house before 5AM

At 4:30AM, the house was wide awake. Most people were munching on bananas and oatmeal with a side of fresh coffee. Last minute preparations and then we made our way to Transition. I got there around 5:30, got body marked (sadly, not Tri Tats), and got my area set up. The biggest challenge was that I have a pretty large Transition bag, and we were not allowed to lay out bags along the fence. I got lucky because a couple athletes near me didn't show up, so I stashed my bag in their spot, but I don't know what I would have done otherwise.

Just me and 3,000 friends at 5AM

Race start and swim

The male pros started at 6:40, and the women followed shortly after. My AG was the last wave -once again- , so I had to hang around until 8:17. Wetsuits were not legal for this race, but I wore a skinsuit.

The first couple hundred meters were so shallow that you could easily stop and stand. I did some standing and dolphin diving because, well why not.

The swim was a simple out and back loop. At the first turn, I checked my time and was disappointed to see I was at 25 minutes. In the pool, I'd been doing the full distance in about 35 minutes,so I was frustrated that I was going so slow. Honestly I felt like I was moving pretty well, but my time said otherwise.

I finished up the return part of the swim,and the last 100 meters or so was once again shallow. Even though I told myself that I should swim for as long as I could, I ended up trying to walk through the water. Big mistake there. Wading through the water like that burned my quads and was probably slower than swimming. I was already frustrated with my slow swim, especially considering all the swim training I've been doing. After the race, I found out that many people had slow swims, likely due to a strong current, and also a possibly extended swim course. Many were commenting online that their watches recorded 1.4 miles rather than the prescribed 1.2 . Final swim time: 55 minutes.

Take-away on the swim:

• practice open water more prior to a race
• practice sighting
• do more drills
• learn to kick!

T1 and Bike

I took my time in T1 because I was already frustrated and didn't think an extra minutes or 2 would make a difference. I put on 2XU calf sleeves that were not allowed for the swim, socks helmet sunglasses, and prepared my nutrition. For the bike, I had prepared enough Perpetuem for a 3 hour bike ride. I had also loaded my Saltstick dispenser with Hammer Endurance Aminos, and had a plastic vial with Endurolyte capsules.

Eagleman is pretty well known for being very flat, hot, and a little windy. It all lived up what was promised. My plan was to take alternating Aminos and Endurolytes every 15 minutes, and drinking water.

The first two thirds of my bike were great. I think I was averaging around 21mph, and feeling strong. Then….I died. As I had read would happen, after about mile 35 the wind picked up, and it started to get very hot. My pace dropped significantly, and I found it increasingly difficult to stay in aero position. I had been hoping to finish the bike in under 3 hours, but ended up going a little bit over.

Final bike time: 3 hours, 16 minutes

Take-away on the bike:

• Make sure to get in the long bike rides during training
• Train in aero for longer
• Work on bike power in the off-season

T2 and Run

My T2 was a little faster, though still long for my standars. At 3 and half minutes, I sure wasnt hustling but I’m ok with that. i had to find my spot and rack my bike, change shoes (regular laces, not lock-laces), and apply a new coat of sunscreen. Boy was that ever useless. At the point that I started it was at least 80F outside, and there is very little shade cover. It took a little while to get my run legs back, and so my first mile was surprisingly tough. Well...the next 12 miles were no cakewalk either. It was hoooooot. Apparently the Real-feel at time was over 100F. Aid station were spread out about every 1.5 miles. To their credit, the aid station were pretty well stocked. In general, they had ice-water, ice, wet sponges, GU, orange slices, bananas, pretzels, chips, and friendly volunteers. My basic “strategy” was to survive for as long as I could between aid stations. I ran when I could, and then walked when I couldn't. I made a lot of friends along the way, taking the chance to make quick joke with other athletes about the heat, the awesome tan lines we would have, and anything else to take our minds off of the general pain we were in. At the aid stations, I’d double fist ice-water, toss ice in my hat, in my top and sometime…..down my pants. Gentleman, this last point felt amaaaaaazing. I also tucked sponges under the shoulder-straps of my top. I’d often carry a cup of ice for a while after each station to chew on and sip freshly melted water for as long as it would last. I continued to pop Endurolyte capsules every half hour or so, and had 4 Hammer Gels that really provided nice bursts of energy to help me run.

There’s no other way to say it other than that the run was painful. My feet had been damp for 6 hours, and I could feel blisters forming. My shoulders were burning and there wasn’t much I could do about it other than ignore the pain and focus on finishing. What could I have done differently? Honestly I don’t know. Maybe try to run in the heat more? Who knows. The one “good” point was that I basically even split it, covering the first half in 1:14:59 , and the back half in 1:14:48 . Overall pace was 11:26 / mile.

Final run time: 2:29

Take away from the run:

- HOT!!!!!!!

- Yeah that’s all I got

Property of Finisherpix...someone want to buy it for me?

Final Total time: 6:50

Overall, Eagleman truly lived up to what I had read to expect. The swim was a little rough, the bike was flat, windy, and hot, and the run was a furnace. Would i do this race again? Absolutely. what would I do differently? Maybe i’d take a small bottle of sunscreen with me on the run, or wear some kind of cooling bolero thing that I’ve seen people wearing.

Post race....i've got some pretty fun burns on my back, arms, and legs making for a pretty miserable week. After the race I kept up the tradition of downing a pint of Ben and Jerry's cookie dough Ice cream, a bag of Ruffles Sour Cream and Onion chips, and butt-loads of water.

Well deserved in my opinion

OK, this has probably been one of the longest race reports I’ve written, so I hope you’ve enjoyed it or found it useful

Have a good one, and keep tri-ing!

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Lifetime Fitness Indoor Tri 2015 Race recap

We're not even a week into the new year, and I've got a triathlon in the bag!

This past Sunday in the Lifetime Fitness Indoor Triathlon, which is a national race series that they are putting on in partnership with Ironman. The cool thing about this race series is that instead of any traditional distances, this race is based on time. So the way it breaks down is

10 minute swim

10 minute transition

30 minute bike

10 minute transition

20 minute run.

Distances are measured at each stage , and points are allocated  base on how far you went compared to everyone else. So if there were 100 athletes, then the person who goes the farthest in the swim would get 100 points. second place 99 points, third 98 points and so on, for each stage.

When I heard about this race, I forwarded it to the Central Jersey Tri Club, and we actually managed to work with the organisers to get our own wave, so that the CJTC would be racing as a group.

Everything at the Lifetime Fitness we went too was beautiful. Great facility, from the lockers, to the 2 indoor pools, cycling studio, and massive cardio equipment room.

Here's how my race went;

Swim;  16 lengths, 50 points

In the 10 minutes of the swim, I managed to eek out 16 length. Ok, I'm slow, but having only swam twice since Princeton, it was good enough for me. I also grabbed 50 points (out of 97 athletes), so in truth it was right in the middle of the pack.

Bike: 10.3miles, 76 points

Just warming up

The bike was done in the cycling studio. We had time to figure out our positioning prior to the race, so in the 10 minute transition we had to hustle over to the studio, get everything set up, and grab a quick warm up. With the sound of a bell we started. The hardest thing about this stage was the lack of air and apparent lack of proper air conditioning. It got HOT. And I'm a sweater (one who sweats, not a type of clothing). My strategy was to warm up for the first 10 minutes, push for the next 10, then take it a bit easier on the end to help my legs prepare for the run. I think I maybe could have pushed a bit harder but overall I'm pretty happy with my position among the field with 76 points. Video of the bike portion

Run; 2.71miles, 89 points

The run was obviously done on a treadmill. We were given the bell to start and from there we could control our own speed or incline (though I don't know why anyone would add incline for this kind of race). Employees were helpful and offered towels, water, or gels as we ran. My strategy for this was to start "easy" at 6mph and increase it steadily every minute or so until I found a good pace. i really wanted to hit 3 miles total. By midway I was running at about 8mph, but I was realising that it would be tough to hit 3 miles so I kept increasing the speed. for the last 5 minutes or so I was zipping along at 9.5mph, watching my distance climb. Unfortunately I had probably been too conservative at the start, and ended just shy, but still good enough to grab 89 points.

Overall; 215 points, 18th overall (tied for 17th technically)

WOOHOO! First race of 2015!!!

After the race there was a complimentary massage/stretch table offered to athletes, along with some snacks and water. Really, I think everyone had a great time at this race and I personally would do it again in a flash. No medals handed out, but did I mention that every participant got to  snag an awesome "I'm a Triathlete" shirt? Yup. Totally worth it

.

CJTC Representing!

*All photos courtesy of http://photos.rnvillaphotography.com/

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Off-Season Mini-post: Crossfit (part 3)

OK almost made it! This was the third straight day of Foundations class for crossfit, and I was happy to be almost done. Honestly, triathlon and marathon training have made me used to having sore legs, and occasionally sore arms or shoulders from swimming, but I've never been so thoroughly sore across my body. My legs feel like tree trunks as I stomp around the office, my shoulders are sore, and now even my lats are aching every time I raise my arms. Man, it feels great.

So here's what we learned on Day 3:

This day was meant to be all about Olympic lifting. Really it was only 1 or two moves which was focused on doing a dead lift  and the snatch. Here's what the snatch is supposed to be and how to do it. The Jerk is basically the same except you stop with the barbell in the rack-squat position at your collarbone.

It seems like an easy thing to do, or at least understand conceptually, but stringing together the movements was actually pretty tricky, and will definitely need more practice in the future. There really wasn't time to learn anything else, and for the most part I think the coach covered most of the movement and scaling options that we would be needing in most classes.

That's all for the foundations classes. I'll be posting an update with my thoughts on Crossfit in about a month, once I have real class experience.

You can go back and check out my recap of Day 1 here, or Day 2 here

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Off-Season Mini-post: Crossfit (part 2)

So the adventure continued last night with the second of three Foundations classes to get ready for real classes at Crossfit KOA. Whereas the first day began with a mix of dynamic and static mostly leg stretches, last night we got introduced to a few new friends.

First, the coach gave us all foam rollers. Not the kind of roller I have at home, which is basically blue foam that I've used after long runs/bikes, but a nasty Triggerpoint roller with a hard surface and grooves. Honestly I didn't even have the worst one. Another participant who was apparently very stiff got a roller full of knobs, which must have hurt like a bitch.

We began by rolling our backs (heard a few nice clicks), then moved on to our legs, then did our triceps using a lacrosse ball, and finished off our stretching session using heavy duty elastic bands anchored to an overhead pole.

Then, the fun stuff. This class focused on overhead lifting. I honestly don't recall all the names, but we went through lifting a barbell from our chest, lifting it and jump-splitting our legs, lifting with legs hopping just an inch outwards, and pistol squats, which is basically parleying a bbarbellsquat into a launching motion overhead. We didn't use much weight, but it was still definitely tiring.

A rowing machine. Pretty simple, right? 

To finish the session, we got introduced to the rowing machine. I've used one before and you've probably seen them at the gym. While not incredibly complex, it's actually a little tricky to get the sequence of moves in properly as you pick up speed.


We did the rowing game for a few minutes while the coach helped us with our form, and that was it for Day 2. No time for a workout, which I think the other participants and I were totally OK with after yesterdays vomit-fest.

On Day 3, I'm told we are going to delve into the world of Olympic lifting. Stay tuned to see how that goes, or you can go back and read about Day 1 here.

Thanks for reading, and keep Tri-ing!

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Off-Season Mini-post: Crossfit (part 1)

Now that race season is pretty much over, I want to try to expand my exercise library and work some different aspects than the usual endurance stuff that I'm used to. So, after doing some searching on Groupon, I found a deal at Crossfit KOA, a box that's pretty close-by to home.

A nice touch about KOA is that they have new members do a 3 day "Foundations" program, where you and up to 9 others get some time to learn the basics of proper technique for the different moves that Crossfit uses.

I'll be giving a quick summary of my thoughts here during the Foundations period, and later once I've been doing it for a month or so.

Foundation ; Day 1

I showed up to sign up for the program and found the staff at KOA to be really friendly. Multiple trainers (coaches?) came up to me while I was waiting for the program to start and introduced themselves. The facilities is pretty much what I expected. I has plenty of ropes, cages, weights, and is generally appropriately rugged looking. A class was in progress and I got to watch a handful of participants with what looked like widely varying fitness levels doing barbell squats. No meatheads, no steroid junkies, just a bunch of every-type athletes trying to be healthier.

My class started and I met my trainer and the other 2 participants (small class). For the first 45 minutes or so, he showed and has us practice doing some squats, various barbell squats, and box jumping techniques to maintain proper form. Because we were such a small group, we finished pretty quickly and so he gave us a workout. On a whiteboard he wrote;

14 mins
10 WB
10 Burpees
200m run

So, 14 minutes, 10 wall-balls (squat with heavy ball that gets thrown up as you rise, 10 burpees, and 200 m dash outside.

Wall-Balls. They suck almost as much as Burpees

I thought 14 minutes was a tonne of time to get this done, so when it came to my run, I gave it all I had. Trotting back in and out of breath, I heard the coach say "Great job Eddie, only 10 minutes left". At which point I realized that we had to do sets of the workout for 14 minutes. Crap.

The next 10 minutes were painful, tiring, nearly vomit-inducing. By the end, my lungs were burning and I was done.

So...overall the first class was pretty fun.

Check back tomorrow to see how Day 2 goes.

Thanks for reading and keep Tri-ing!

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NYC Triathlon 2014 - Race Report

Expo and Packet Pick-up
Because of the size and technical factors involved in this race, the event coordinators make it mandatory to attend an information sesion before being able to pick up your packet. The half hour info session covered a brief outline of the course, transition, and a few of the tricky spots to look out for. It was held along with the expo at the Grand Hyatt in New York City. It really wasn't all that painful, and afterwards I headed to packet pickup, which was organized by number. I was number 4958, out of somewhere near 5000 so I just marched over to the last table.

Chip scanning station

Waiting in line for my packet

After a few minutes in queue, I approached the table, flashed my USAT card and a piece of ID, and had to sign some USAT waivers, probably promising not to sue if I died in the Hudson.
I then had a wristband attached to my arm which would serve as my identification as a participant for the weekend.

Then, we just had to get our chips scanned and we were let into the Expo.

The race expo

Getting my ankle taped

The Expo was fairly large, though not as big as I've seen for some marathons. They were selling a lot of event apparel, and also had many different vendors. There were sports/recovery drinks and food available to sample from some smaller companies, as well as Muscle Milk, Clif Bar, and Natural Valley. There were also booths set up by some of the race sponsors selling their merchandise, like Vitamix, which had an Infomercial wannabe showing off the blender, and X-terra. I actually ended up buying a new Vortex 4 sleeveless which I later wore for the race.

I also decided to buy some KT Tape from a booth that they had, and the guys over at KT had a rep offering free taping, so I got my ankle wrapped, to hopefully help some of the nagging that I've been feeling.


After staying for maybe a bit too long, I picked up my goody bag, race t-shirt, and headed outta there.

So many bikes!

Bike check-in was set for Saturday, and I showed up pretty late in the night to do mine. It was actually pretty amazing to see so many bikes all in one place. This was probably one of the largest races I've done so far, except for maybe Tremblant 70.3 . In any case, it was nice to be able to walk through and rack my bike in peace and quiet instead of fighting for space and rushing around with many other athletes. The one negative thing I noticed is that the space assigned for each athlete was really quite small. There was barely enough room for my different shoes, and I also had bags with my change of clothing.

Race morning (yes it's morning, despite the 5am darkness)

In retrospect, the once thing I would have done differently is that I should have completely set up my transition during bike check-in, instead of coming back at 5am to do this. My wave only started at almost 8am, and I would have liked to have gotten a few extra hours of sleep!



Swim

Pre-race. I don't know what's going on with my hair.

The swim was organized a little different than most. Instead of a mass start or one wave per age group, you were divided into waves, and then lined up onto a barge about 10 or 15 athletes at a time. They would release each "mini-wave" every 15 seconds or so. I found it to be unique, and really much more relaxing than trying to avoid being swam over by 200 other people. The best thing about this swim is of course the current! I'm a bad swimmer and I know it, but even when I stopped, I could tell that I was moving fairly quickly by looking at the nearby shoreline. The swim was uneventful. There were no dead fish, dead bodies, condoms, trash, or jellyfish. Really the water is just kinda murky, vaguely salty, and it MOVES. At the end of the swim there are volunteers to literally pull you out. My total swim was 24 minutes. Slow by the race standard, and one I don't expect to beat anytime soon (until the next time I do this race maybe).

T1+Bike
At the end of the swim, volunteers literally pull you out of the water, and then you run a few hundred yards to transition. I had a little trouble unzipping my wetsuit. Being brand new and the first time I'd worn it, I maybe should have practiced beforehand. Anyway I eventually caught the zipper cord and peeled it off halfway while running. Getting my bike shoes on seemed to go a little slower than I'd like, and I was fumbling with deciding if I should wear sunglasses or not before I decided to just shove them in my back pocket since it was quite overcast, and the lenses had gotten all wet from the rain. I ran to Bike-Out, crossed the timing mat, and was about to mount my bike when I realized I had a flat rear tire. Yuuuuup.
Sooooo I ran back over the timing mat back into transition where there was a bike tech helping out. My wife was checking my progress through an app, and since Bike Out/In use the same timing mat, I apparently posted and amazing bike time of 200-something miles an hour. After waiting for the tech to help out another athlete, he got to helping me change my tube, and I was off again. According to the official results, my T1 was 5 minutes, but I'm not sure how accurate it is. it seemed like the process took longer, but maybe I was just anxious.

Sampled from MarathonFoto.com

Immediately after mounting you make a steep climb, so its suggest to be in an easy gear. This was definitely a good idea. Since the ground was also wet, I think it would have been easy to spin out and fall otherwise. The course itself was a straight shot up the West Side Highway, with generous rolling hills up through the Bronx before turning around. I found the way out to be more difficult than coming back, and the hills were definitely tiring me out. My goal was to try to make up as much time as I could from the swim and flat tire fiasco, but with my muscles burning I didn't move all that fast. Still, I think I managed to pass a nice amount of people, a few with a number between 25-29 on their calf. Along the way I tried to give as much encouragement as I could to Team in Training athletes as I could when I passed them. There are no aid stations on the bike, so all nutrition has to be with  you, which I found to be fine given the overcast weather. Towards the end of my ride, the weather finally started to clear up and get warmer as the sun came out, At that point, I had drank about half my Hammer Perpetuem, and refilled my Aerodrink bottle once. I should point out that I didn't actually DRINK all my water, but rather end up spitting a bunch of my legs to cool them off. Total bike time is posted as 1:39, though again I'm not sure if any of my tube change is included here or not. A 15mph pace is kinda slow for me, but it is what it is at this point. Ill be focusing on my biking a lot leading up to Princeton 70.3, so hopefully it will pay off.


T2 +Run

Sampled from MarathonFoto.com. And yes, I am flying

As I mentioned, the Bike-In is the same as Bike-Out, so the bike finished going back down a rather steep hill into transition. I quickly ran my bike to my rack, and ended up just leaning my bike against another, because I couldnt seem to get it in all the way to properly rack it. I got my helmet off, took my watch from the bike, jammed my feet into my Zoots and was off. My T2 was 1:45, quite different from T1. The Run course ran towards and through Central Park. I'd never ran here before so it was really cool to finally have the chance. The interesting part was that since Central Park is such a popular area for runners/cyclists, there were tons of each moving towards the race. Our Half the path was blocked off for the race while rest was open for general use. The park is somewhat hilly, and it definitely was a little tough. There was an aid station every mile or so offering Gatorade, water, and in some stops ice, gels, and I think towels. I kept up a fairly decent pace, since I really wanted to make up some time, and I know the run is my strongest sport of the three. I passed a lot of TNT, as well as a nice amount of people oin my Age Group. 5k split time was 28:15, and total run time was 50 minutes, so I'm pretty happy with a having posted a decent negative split. I thought I might have been running too fast at the beginning, but it's good to know I was able to hold on and push through until the end. Total Race time was 2:59:24, setting a new PR, and finally breaking the 3 hour mark!

Finish+Post Race
The finish line was in Central Park, and nicely marked off to prevent overcrowding or crashing into pedestrians as I've seen in other races. Immediately after crossing I was handed my finisher's medal, and had a ice-cold towel slapped on my shoulder by another TriSports Champion, Anthony.  I was also handed a bottle of cold water, and picked up some banana and apples as I got the timing chip removed by volunteers, and was then ushered out into the family reception area. I got some ice wrapped around one of my calves in the medical tent for no real reason other than to speed recovery, and then met up with my wife. I didn't spend much time looking around, but I was surprised that there wasn't more of a finisher's celebration. Again, there might have been and I didn't see it, but I was hoping to buy some sort of race-apparel there instead of having to go online.

As usual, I rewarded myself with some much needed junk food. Pizza, home fries, Birthday-Cake M&M's (Really good!), and more generally crap food throughout the day were on the docket. Gotta love racing ;)

Thanks for reading!

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NJ State Olympic Triathlon 2014

Last week was the New Jersey State Triathlon, so I've been wanting to get this race report out while it's still fresh in my mind. To me, this race was especially cool because it was my first since getting married, and was also my first in New Jersey. The race, organized by CGI Racing,  is the largest in NJ, and is split between a sprint and Olympic distance races on the Saturday and then Sunday. 

Expo and Pickup

Packet pickup for the Olympic distance was made available on Friday, Saturday, and on race day if pre-reserved. I had initially reserved race day pickup, but thanks to a change in my schedule I was able to get out on Friday afternoon. I don't really love that I had to drive all the way out to Mercer Park for it, but it was just under each way so not horrible. The bigger trouble than I ran into, and so did many others that I met en route, was that the location was not easy to find through my GPS. I had to actually follow the GPS location through a link in one of their emails before being able to direct a small caravan of athletes to the race site.

Overall, everything was pretty organized, I walked up to a desk, signed a release form, flashed my USAT ID, and was promptly handed a plastic sac containing my timing chip, athlete bracelet, bib, tech T-shirt, and leftover Finisher mugs from the Love Run (a Philadelphia based half-marathon also organized by CGI). 

The Expo was fine. There were a couple shops selling triathlon related products, as well as a few health-oriented companies with booths.

Race Day

Transition opened a little before 6AM on race day, and there were plenty of volunteers on hand to assist with body-marking. The transition area was pretty large, well organized, and each athletes space was big enough to comfortably rack a bike and have shoes neatly laid out next to it. Fun note, I had somehow forgotten to bring water, but a quick holler to nobody in particular and a fellow athlete handed me a large jug to fill one of my bottles with,  Another funny moment, is that close to when transition was closing, someone anounced over the loudspeaker that a bike tire had blown. Ok not so funny for that athlete but overall pretty nice of someone else for getting it announced. After setting up my stuff, I headed over to visit the Central Jersey Triathlon Club tent for a quick chit chat. Another nice thing about this race is that CGI provided space for any club with more than a certain number of athletes racing, as well as (most excitedly) a DECICATED PORT-A-POTTY!!!.

A couple minutes later and I wandered to the lake to get in a quick warm-up.

Swim

Due to the water temperature, the race was not wetsuit legal. It was allowed, but would remove eligibility from awards. Even though I had no expectations of hitting the podium, I felt like I didn't want to be both overheated and constricted so opted to go sans wetsuit. I only had a few minutes to warm-up before the started singing the national anthem. I made my way and towards the start corral, since I was in the first wave. Not long after I was wading out for the open water start. After what seemed like too long of a wait the race started and we were off! OK, most people were off. I kinda just went. I'm not a great swimmer to begin with, and I chose to not wear a wetsuit in a race for my first time, and I got a lovely kick to the head early on that dislodged my goggles. Anyway after about 40 minutes I emerged from the water  happy to be done swimming and in a hurry. UPDATE: Apparently the swim WAS westuit legal. I guess I never got the memo. Oh well.

T1+Bike

Sampled from ChessiePhoto.com

Luckily, transition area was just a short distance from the water, and I wanted to get through T1 as fast as possible. I grabbed my pre-Body-Glided shoes, sunglasses, and helmet and was out in 2 minutes flat. The bike course covered two loops of mostly flat terrain. It took me a little while to get my legs moving comfortably, and I held off from taking in any nutrition until about 15 minutes into the bike. I had frozen a bottle with 3 scoops of Hammer Perpetuem mixed in, and it was still perfectly cold but melted at this point. I also had my aero-bottle filled with water, as well as my secret weapon; sticks of gum tucked between the elbow pad cushion and metal. Why do I need gum during a race? I have no idea but I find it keeps me focused. I wanted to try to push on the bike, but for whatever reason I was feeling the burn and couldn't keep my pace as high as I'd have liked. Still my total time for the bike was 1:23.

                                                               

T2+Run
The course had aid station about every mile that carried a mix of water, Hammer Heed, Hammer Gels, and at two aid stations, wet towels. LOVED the wet towels. Also I should point out that the volunteers here really rocked and were cheering plenty. 5K in I was feeling pretty pooped, so I kept sipping on Hammer Gels, and slowly squeezed the towels over my head when I could. My finishing time on the run was 50 minutes, giving me a total race time of 3 hours flat. Not great, worse than what I wanted, but not bad considering my recent injury, and general business what with getting married and moving to a new country and all.

Post-Race

After crossing the finish line I was handed a medal ( a HUGE medal), a bottle of water, had my timing chip removed, and was released back into the expo. A catered tent was open for athletes with chicken breast, grilled veggies, some fruit and drink. Nearby, a local company was offering athletes free chair massages, which I signed up for as I always do after a race. There were also a few other food vendors handing out free samples, and an ice cream truck. A massage, free food, and Drumstick later I was satisfied and went back to the CJTC tent to pick up a few things, wish congrats to other athletes, and head home.

I totally recommend this race to others, and definitely plan on racing it again in future years. It was well organized, fun, a nice course, and pretty close to my home. 

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