Awards took forever at the Topeka Tinman, first they gave out the long course triathlon awards, then they gave out the short course triathlon awards, and then they gave out the duathlon awards, so it wasn’t until around 1pm that I finally got on the road headed back to Columbia. After a brief stop in Columbia to shower and switch to my car from the MLERF van, I was on my way to Belleville where I was going to spend the night with my parents. By the time I arrived, my injured calf had tightened considerably and I had to walk with a noticeable limp. Was it even worth it to try and race the next morning? I decided I should at least do the swim and bike and then only complete the run if I felt ok…

Since I hadn’t been able to pick up my packet on Saturday, I had to show up before 6:30, even though I didn’t start until 8:52. So I went ahead and left at 5am and arrived at race site by 5:40 and got a good transition spot. The next 3 hours I spent using the rest room, eating, and relaxing. I also spent much of the time kicking myself for not registering earlier, the longer I waited to start, the windier the bike course became…

Finally, 8:52 rolled around, probably closer to 9:00, and I was off. Within the first 200 meters of the pool swim, I passed 3 swimmers. The first 200 meters are narrow, with swimmers going down and back in the same lane, this made passing difficult. After this 200 meter section, there was a whole lane for each direction and passing wasn’t an issue. I ended up with a 9:34 swim, a 45” improvement over 2004.

Once out on the bike things felt good, at least until I heard the train whistle… Sure enough, I arrived at the track crossing and joined a small group of triathletes waiting for the train to pass. Fortunately there was a volunteer writing down the time and number of every person waiting; I took the opportunity to down a quick Hammer Gel. Finally, the train was passed and I took off. The Rec-Plex bike course is flat and fast once out past the train tracks. For the most part during this section my computer rarely read below 26mph. At the turn around my average had risen up to 24.5 mph. Maybe this year I could finally hold a 24mph average for this course…

The last section of the bike course gets hilly, not really hilly, but after the flat section the overpass crossing I70 seems like a mountain. Once up over the interstate, it’s all downhill. At this point I started taking my feet out of my shoes. That is when my left calf which had felt fine throughout the bike decided to lock up in a horrific cramp. I had gotten my right foot out, but my left leg was locked up with a cramp and any attempt to bend the leg and remove my foot resulted in the cramp flaring back up. Finally, the cramp subsided enough to get my foot out and resume pedaling. Bike time: 53:39, average speed of 24mph…

Transition two went smoothly and surprisingly my calf didn’t feel all that bad, it felt tons better than the day before when I had limped for half a mile after the bike. I didn’t feel like I was moving very fast, but I was passing a lot of people. A bunch of athletes coming in the opposite direction were calling out my name, seeing that it was written across my chest, this was giving me a little extra incentive. My fear had been that I would have to walk on the run, however things didn’t feel too bad and before I knew it the run was done. 30:20, a 6:19 pace, much better than I expected, especially since I had run at 6:36 pace the year before! My final placing was 4th overall with a time of 1:33:33, 2:11 faster than in 2004.

I’m not sure exactly how it happened, but it did and now I’m sitting here with my calf on ice. I think this is how it happened…

On Friday I headed to Smithville Missouri to work on the bike and run courses for both the USAT Age Group Nationals as well as the US Half Championship. Working on the bike course meant driving various roads with a GPS unit, trying to find loops that are ride able and equal to 24.8 and 56 miles. Figuring out the run course involved riding the various options on my tri bike, measuring them with both the GPS unit and my bike computer. Consequently, by the end of the day I had ridden around 26 miles, however, I had not brought my bike shoes and so all of this riding was with my running shoes on speedplay pedals. So perhaps it was the unusual pedaling position and technique used all day Friday…

Friday evening I arrived in Topeka Kansas. After previewing the race setup and courses, I found a nice little Italian restaurant and had a great dinner. Finally, around 10:30 I retired to the local Super Walmart parking lot.

After arriving at the race site at around 5:15, I got everything set up. After Miki gave me a hard time when I told her I typically didn’t warm up before an event, I decided that maybe I ought to in order to avoid injury. After spending about 10 minutes or so warming up with some light jogging, I decided I was ready.

The race started out at a reasonable pace. One athlete moved to the front and was setting a reasonable pace so I moved in behind him and decided to follow him. About a ¼ of a mile into the race, just when I thought the run was going to be easy, it happened. There wasn’t any type of noticeable pop or ripping, just one second my calf felt fine and the next second it felt like it was ripped. Kind of like that feeling the morning after you get a really bad calf cramp at night. The kind where your calf locks up and it takes everything you have not to scream out in pain. But this wasn’t after getting out of bed, this was in the middle of a race and I had no idea what was wrong. My immediate thought was I would have to DNF, that I didn’t want to risk permanent injury. I decided to stick it out, maybe I could run through it…

Despite the fact that every time my left foot hit the ground my calf hurt like hell, the race was going decidedly good. We had reached the turn around and the two of us had put a considerable lead on the rest of the group. A mile and a half later, we were just about to transition one. I had dropped back a little, but decided to catch back up and lead into the first transition, a little psychological ploy. I had measured the course the night before, and it had come out at 3.2 miles. We came into the first transition in 18:28, a 5:46 pace which was a huge surprise for me with how my calf was feeling.

Knowing that I was in the lead, I knew all I needed to do was not get passed by anyone on the bike. I passed a ton of people from the triathlon, but wasn’t passed by anyone.

Coming off the bike, my leg had gotten tight. The first half mile or so was spent with a definite limp, but finally I was able to at least break into a normal stride. I checked behind me a few times and couldn’t see anyone behind me and it wasn’t until about a minute after the turnaround that I saw the second and third duathlete. By this point my stride felt fine despite a steady pain that I was able to ignore. With a two minute plus lead, I knew despite the bum calf I would hold on for the win, the question was however, was it worth it? I still had Rec Plex to race the following morning and the rest of the season to complete…

Congratulating 3rd place finisher Steve Wathke

Boy how time flies! It has been over three months since my last post. A ton has happened… I quit my job in Kirksville at Truman State University where I had been employed for the last three and a half years in the computer department, I moved to Columbia, and I started a new job with the Missouri Lions Eye Research Foundation/Ultramax Triathlons. In addition, I’ve competed in multiple races in that time frame, but have been too pre-occupied to keep up with the race reports. I plan on re-visiting some of those races, but first I’m going to report on the one that is freshest in my mind…

It took me a while to decide if I really wanted to do Memphis in May, it wasn’t until late April that I finally signed up and I still wasn’t totally committed to going. Several weeks out, I decided I would go ahead and enter and find a spot to camp somewhere once I got down there. It wasn’t until a week before the event that I hooked up with a couple of CMC members, Greg Fields and Miki Bohon that were going down and the three of us ended up carpooling down. Once there, Greg and I stayed in the Naval Station which was a bargin…

The three of us met early on Saturday morning and headed down to Memphis. We arrived at race site around one in the afternoon and picked up our packets. After a brief dip in the lake, Greg and I headed out to bike the run course, while Miki proceeded to swim the full 1.5k swim, oh to be a former collegiate swimmer… Not only am I not a great swimmer, I was also experiencing shoulder pain during my brief swim that afternoon, enough pain I wasn’t sure I could make the swim the following morning.

We finished our time at the race site by driving the bike course after which we went to find some pasta. We found ourselves at a great pasta house that had already been discovered by a bunch of other triathletes. There was a little bit of a wait, but it wasn’t bad as there were plenty of people to meet and talk with. I ended up chatting with Mia Richter who had placed second the previous year at Halfmax. I tried to convince her to return to Halfmax this year, but she had other plans. Following my conversation with Mia, another triathlete who had overheard me mention Andrea Fischer when talking about Halfmax approached me. After she introduced herself as Desiree we talked for a few minutes and then she went back to the bar where she had been drinking. At this point a guy who had been sitting next to me leans over and says. “Do you know who that was? That was Desiree Ficker, one of the hottest professional triathletes out there!”

Race morning arrives and Greg and I arrive at race site by 5am. I had eaten a light breakfast consisting of instant oatmeal, a banana, and pop tarts. Once in the transition area, I was the first to rack my bike in my section and I got about the best spot in the whole transition. With plenty of time to spare, I had my area set up and then I just relaxed by reading “The Perfect Mile” next to my gear…

It wasn’t long before it was my turn to enter the water. Thankfully my shoulder wasn’t as painful as it had been on Saturday, however, the water temperature had supposedly risen four degrees since the previous morning (which I think is a bunch of bull) so wetsuits were not allowed. I knew this would affect my time, I figured I would take about 26 minutes, however it ended up taking me 28:15. I never should have looked at my watch at the end, when I did I was really disappointed…

Once out on the bike I settled into a rhythm and tried not to think about the swim. While I felt like I could go faster on the bike, I decided a controlled effort would be better as I would still have something left for the run. After several miles, I caught and passed Steve Taylor which was a shock to me. For one reason, he had started several minutes behind me, so he had apparently passed me in the water. But even more so, I was shocked at the fact that I had caught him at all since he is such a strong biker, apparently he was having a bad day on the bike or I was having a really good day, probably a combination of both.

My goal on the bike was to go under an hour, hopefully around fifty-five minutes. I ended up at fifty-nine minutes and ten seconds, my first triathlon averaging over twenty-four miles an hour. I went under an hour, but not quite as fast as I had hoped.

In the last major corner just before the end of the bike I swung the corner a little too wide. I stayed on the road, but in doing so my left calf muscle cramped up really bad! The last couple of minutes on the bike were spent trying to work the cramp out. Pulling into the transition I really concentrated on getting out of there with a really fast transition. I ended up with the second fastest transition in my age group.

As usual, after the bike, the run took a while to get in a rhythm. My first mile split was 6:40, not terrible but slower than I expected. At the second mile split I had slowed to 6:41, however this included several difficult hills so I actually felt good about this split. Also, I was starting to feel comfortable and had passed several guys in my age group who had started after me; I was making up for time I had lost in the swim or on the bike.

I missed hitting my split button on the next mile marker, but at mile four I had 12:55 for two miles so my pace was down to around 6:27. Mile 5 was 6:34 and mile 6 was 6:20 with a final run time of 40:36 a 6:32 average pace. My total time was 2:10:28, an improvement by 9:10 over my time in 2003. I was 11th out of 138 in my age group. Once again, my swim was the deciding factor. The swim times of the guys in front of me on average were around 5 minutes faster. One more reason to keep working on that swim!