Swim, Bike, Run & Smile

Events:

We had a great turnout for the CTC summer party. The venue and food was amazing. Thank you to everyone who showed up and if you couldn’t make it this time we’ll see you next time.

The following is a list of the Club races for the 2016 season:

1)  (canceled) Graeagle

2)  September 17, 2016 Black Butte Tri Event, Black Butte Lake, registration is open: http://blackbuttetriathlon.org/

Training:

Swim at One Mile:

The swim at One Mile as begun. Bring your wetsuit and swim laps with your friends, on Friday mornings at 7:00 AM.

In Motion Swim:

“Heather” at In Motion holds a Tri swim class on Tue. and Thurs. at 9:30 A.M. contact In Motion for further details.

The River Road TTs:

Have begun and will continue as follows: 08/04/2016, and end on 09/01/2016. Registration will start at 5:30 P.M. and the first rider rolls at 6:00 P.M. The starting line is on West 5th St., heading west out of town, just past Miller Ave.

The Friday Rides:

If you are interested in this ride please send me an email to sinsdady at yahoo dot com.

Runs:

Tony English, is leading a LSD run on Sundays from the bathrooms at 5 mile at 8:00 AM. This is an easy pace 60 minute run. There is also a LSD run on Saturdays meeting at the 5 mile bathrooms at 8:00 AM.

CTC Track Workout:

Every Thursday (except for the Thursdays that we have the TTs) meet at the Chico State track at 5:45 PM.

Race Results:

This is a shout out to anybody who has participated in a recent race. We would love to hear from you. Please send me any information on a race you have participated in.  This could be as simple as your name and the name of the event, your results or a race report outlining your personal experience.

Athlete of the month:

Please take the time to help us pick the next Athlete of the month. Just send an email to president@chicotriathlonclub.com listing your nomination.

The athlete of the month for July is Brian Larson. Congratulations Brian!!

Volunteer opportunity:

Joanne Gilchrist has created the following list of volunteer opportunities for the Club. Please contact Joanne @ jejg at hotmail dot com, if you are interested in helping out at any of the events listed below.

2016:

Black Butte Tri September 17, 2016.

Almond Bowl Nov 6, 2016 Aid Station

Sponsor spotlight:

http://www.wallerfinancialcoaching.com/

Waller Financial Coaching provides a complimentary consultation and $250 off financial planning services for all CTC members. They also provide basic financial planning services for all board members at no cost. Have a great time running, swimming and riding this Month.

Shawn Hughes

CTC President

In the beginning was the race plan, and it was good. It lasted half the race, which is unusual for me! I had a lot of stomach upset with gels and gatorade at Tahoe Half, but I'd been training with Chocolate Brownie Cliff Bars and Perpetuum without difficulty, so my nutrition plan was one bar and one bottle per hour on the bike, then switch to bananas and whatever else was available at aid stations for the run. My goal was an easy 1:15-1:20 swim, a 160-watt bike leg (6:30 to 7:00), and a 4-hour marathon. With time for transitions and flat tires and Murphy, I had reasonable hope for a sub-13 total time.

I was a nervous wreck before the start: warm shivering, quadruple-checking everything, and generally fidgeting like an idiot. Then I hit the water, and it was like a switch went off if my head. This was what I had trained for: something in my head said "Ahh..." and I became completely calm and relaxed. Which is good, because 2500 people in the Russian River is a madhouse; basically a 2.4-mile-long game of water polo with no ball or referee.

Starts for this race were self-seeded by predicted swim time. I'm not a strong swimmer and I know full well that any energy spent shaving 5 minutes off the swim split would be better spent shaving 10 minutes off the run, so I started with the 1:20 wave. I took it very easy on the swim. Usually I set my swim pace to "medium" on a half-iron race and finish in 35-36 minutes, so I figured "easy" would comfortably put me in at 1:20. My perceived-effort calibration got screwed up this spring, though. I blame Greg Watkins: a couple months ago he introduced me to his "round the clock fifties" workout. I won't go into details other than to say that drowning is an attractive alternative, but the net result of repeated applications of this workout is that I spent the entire swim leisurely swimming around people and came out of the water at 1:12 with a pulse rate still below 100.

I fully understood that I had no chance of getting podium for my age group, so every time someone passed me on the bike I just took a breath and checked my power output. I wasn't racing them, I was racing the 13-hour clock. Things went as planned, until mile 45 when the top screw on my right-side bottle cage came out. The cage/bottle proceeded to flop around and cause trouble, so I pulled the bottle out, drank it, and threw the bottle away at the next aid station. This fluid intake was not on schedule, now my stomach was sloshy. I had another bottle of Perpetuum in my special-needs bag at mile 52, so I refilled my remaining bottles and sloshed out onto lap 2. The screw that came out is part of one fastener-set, so I knew that the left bottle would probably go soon also. I drank as much as I could stand from that bottle, and had managed half of it before it failed and I had to ditch the second bottle. One bottle left, 40 miles to go, still sloshy. Not ideal! At the final aid station I knew I'd need more fluids than I had, so I grabbed a gatorade and tried just holding it while riding. This didn't work well, and with 12 to go I had a quarter-bottle of perpetuum in my homemade aerobar sippy-bottle and 2/3 bottle gatorade, so I decided to ditch the sippy-bottle. That's when I discovered the bracket holding the sippy-bottle was broken and barely holding on. It wouldn't hold the gatorade bottle, I couldn't put the sippy-bottle back in. Uff-da. I ditched the gatorade, put the sippy-bottle down the front of my kit with the hose out the top and finished the ride thirsty.

My normalized power for the ride was 161 W. Perfect, on plan! (Other than being thirsty.) My time for the ride was 6:03. Wait, what? 6:03! I'm starting the run at 7:25, that means if I do my 4-hour marathon, I'll finish in under 11:30! So I started off at my planned 9-minute pace --- and reality promptly whacked me upside the head. I wasn't sore yet, I wasn't particularly tired, but my legs just wouldn't move that fast. I kept trying to go faster, but nothing happened. And my stomach had gone from sloshy to crampy. I couldn't drink enough to rehydrate without sloshing and wanting to puke, only enough to maintain my level of thirstiness. So that's what I did.

Nice thing about endurance races: if you keep going forward, they end eventually. At mile 13 I figured out that I could still break 12 hours if I maintained 11-minute miles. That goal lasted until the leg cramp hit at mile 19, so I turned my Garmin watch around so I couldn't see my pace anymore and felt much better. I finished the run in 4:44:40, my worst marathon (and second-best marathon) ever.

Total time: 12:11:31. That's in the top 20% of people fit enough to think racing an Ironman is a good idea, I'm ok with that! It's also much better than I had hoped, and I'm happy with it despite my disappointing run. My quads are a bit stiff today, but not bad. Ironman doesn't suck as much as I expected. Once the kids leave for college and training time is easier to find, I might do another one.

Much gratitude to Greg Watkins for the swim workouts and long rides, Josh Rowe, Brian Oppy, and David Brookes for the morning rides, and all the CTC members --especially Joanne Gilchrist-- for inspiration and encouragement. Most of all, thanks to Kristi Ayars for her support (and patience) while I trained for this crazy thing.

Notes

1. New best time this season
2. Personal Record
3. Full-Suspension MTB
4. Flatted and finished anyway!

The final River Road Time Trial for 2016 will be Thursday September 1st.

Note that past TT results can be found on the Time Trial Page.