Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Collegiate Nationals

Well my 3rd and most likely final Collegiate National Championships have come and gone. Since my plan is to take summer classes and then graduate with my Masters in Kinesiology in December I'm not sure I'll get another shot at competing in this unique race. The atmosphere at collegiate nationals is like none other. No other event draws 1000+ triathletes between the ages of 18 and 28 together for a weekend. The team experience makes the event even more special and there are plenty of crazy costumes, loud cheering and such an overflow of enthusiasm that you can't help but have fun.

This year UT Tyler was bringing a team of 7 and after a short hold up when a member of the team dropped his newton running shoe down the sewer, we were on our way. I was driving and lodging separate from the team this year so I could focus on my race but a big thanks to Hector Moreno for riding with me on the way out and helping with the driving some! We stopped 5 or 6 times throughout the drive, including dinner at Ryan's all-you-can-eat cafe and so we rolled into Tuscaloosa, AL around 9pm thursday night. I left the team to fend for themselves at the somewhat dubious, $40 a night, lodging they had found and headed to the Holiday Inn Express.

Friday morning I was up and out the door for my run. Breakfast (and coffee) at the hotel, then drive to the race site to pick up my packet, ride the course and jump in the water for a 20min swim in my brand new XTERRA wetsuit. Lunch at Chipotle then I layed low the rest of the afternoon before joining are guys to drive to the free pasta dinner. The dinner was... well it was free.

Race morning I awoke at 4:55 am, drank some coffee and an Emergen-C, ate 3/4 of a bagel, a muffin and some steel cut oats. Packed my bottles and gear and headed to transition. I had to wait in line about 20-25min to get in to transition, and then another 15min or so to use the restroom so I didn't have much warm up time. I was over at the swim start 30min prior to race start though so I could make sure and get a swim warm up in.

Race started and I was off. My swim was... terrible. I'm not a good swimmer by any means. It's my achilles heel in triathlon and I've tried many different things over the years but I don't seem to ever improve. Race day was no better and I felt like I was just floundering, spinning my arms the whole time. I think a large part of it was due to the fact that I was using a brand new wetsuit and hadn't swam in a wetsuit or open water since Age group nationals in september of 2010. The wetsuit puts my body in a completely different position and I didn't know how to deal with it. I had no catch, pull or rotation working together and came out of the water wayyyy back.

I'm used to coming out of the water behind, and I didn't really know HOW far back I was so I jumped on my bike and went for it. I had a pretty solid bike ride. There was definitely quite a bit of drafting going on but the officials did a pretty good job of policing. I'm sure I drafted at some point but I tried my best to stay legal while still hanging with the group of guys. I've learned that biking in these non-drafting races is more about paying attention and conserving your energy to make a move and try to gap the pack then it is about just riding your race. If you ride your race you will end up drafting so you have to watch to make sure you maintain proper positioning.

I came off the bike and started the run. I had a gel I was planning on taking at the first aid station but it fell out of my suit coming off the bike and that proved to be fatal. Miles 1-3 I was cruising and felt really, really good. I was reeling people in and knocking them down like nobodies business. After mile 3 I started feeling some fatigue and around mile 4 was when the wheels started to come off. By mile 5 I was in survival mode and literally counting my steps to the finish line. (all 527 of them).

I ended up 27th overall, 7th grad student with a time of 2:04:20. The bike was 1-2min slower then Age group nationals last year and we had a 400m run from swim exit to transition so my time is on-par or a little faster then where I left off last year. I made some errors and have some things to work on but overall it was a decent start to the year and I'm looking forward to some more races!