As the Leadman is an event owned by Life Time Fitness, I felt that I owed it to the company (and myself) to check it out in order to better prepare triathletes to train for future Leadmans. And the race entry $$$ discount as a Life Time Tri coach and the 19 micro-breweries in Bend certainly didn't hurt! I did show a rare example of common sense when I changed my entry from the Epic 250 to the 125 race based on a sore shoulder and an extreme lack of any serious long distance bike training. My training for the 6-day Trans Rockies run helped eliminate most long bike/swims that I would need for a 5km swim followed by a 223km (138 mile) bike leg. So that's my excuse and I'm sticking with it! :-)
So, after a long drive from SLC, T and I arrived late Thursday afternoon in Bend, just early enough to unpack, unwind, and locate a highly recommended brewery/pub/restaurant, 10 Barrel Brewery. An absolutely delightful place to eat/drink/hang out with the locals; I highly endorse it as well.
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10 Barrel Brewery: Overjoyed with my 10 sample appetizer!
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The next day, we did the usual day before a triathlon stuff; race packet pickup, drive the 40 miles out to T1 and drop off the bike/bike bag, jump in Cultus lake and swim around for 10 minutes while T kept saying "I'm glad I'm not doing this race!", then drive back to Bend and drop off the run bag at T2. The weather forecast was for low 40s in the morning, with 30% chance of rain showers, so I prepared for the bad weather and kept thinking nice positive thoughts like "well, it could be snowing" or "well, I could be in the Marines and stationed in Afghanistan" or "well, at least I'm lucky to be doing a triathlon"... The highlights of the day were meeting nice people at the race briefing, including the Life Time Event director, Keith Hughes, and fellow Life Time tri coach Cathy Yndestad (who by the way is a world class age-grouper and would take 3rd overall female the next day despite being jet-lagged from returning from the ITU age group world championship in London). We also met one of my favorite pro triathletes, Jesse Thomas, who lives in Bend and owns a company which makes a very good sports bar, "Picky Bars." Jesse is well known for winning the iconic Wildflower triathlon multiple times and for rocking the fake Ray Bans on his runs... and T just thinks he's the cat's meow...
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| Pro Jesse Thomas and one of his fans |
Race morning: Woke up at 0400, stayed awake till the alarm went off at 0430, and it was game on. Slapped on the race number decals (a nice touch, but they are damn near impossible to get off), took in a light breakfast (oatmeal/peanut butter bars and banana), coffee, grabbed my swim stuff. T drove me 3 miles to T2, where shuttle buses drove the triathletes the 40 miles to the race start. Spectators were discouraged from going out to T1 because of the closed roads (which meant that they would be stuck at T1 for a couple of hours after the start.) Of course, T was more than happy to wish me luck with a kiss, and drive back to the warm hotel room for a nice reentry into Z's ville!
Swim: Got out to T1 with about an hour to my wave start; the 250 Epic triathletes in our bus and the ones behind us were, however, really pressed for time and they barely had time to get their wetsuits on, get their bikes ready, and jump in the lake. There was a nice heated tent for everyone to stay in before their wave, and even though it was cloudy and had rained overnight, it was partly cloudy for the start, with temps in the low 40s. About 30 min. prior to my start, I took in some Generation UCAN (one scoop with a little protein powder) to kick off my fat burning. On the bike I had a bottle of UCAN (4 scoops of Cranberry-Raspberry) which would supply my calories on the bike. I elected not to wear my hoodie, with the water temp around 61 deg F, and the fact that the hoodie was giving me an uneasy "choking" feeling (I need all the help I can get with being at ease in the water!). Despite what I preach to my Tri Team, I just couldn't drag myself to getting a warmup swim in (neither did anyone else in my wave!), but I did do my favorite movement prep exercises in the warming tent (a pre-race ritual which helps calm me down). The race started about on time, and the only glitch was an aborted attempt to play a recording of the national anthem (I was ready to go old school and help the crowd sing it acapella just like Dave Hornung's races, but Keith decided that discretion was the better part of valor...).
Well, my wave finally started, and although the water really wasn't too cold, I still needed to take a few "breaks" from my freestyle and calm down with some breaststrokes. I finally got comfortable with the water and got into a solid rhythm after about 500m or so. The water in Cultus Lake is crystal clear, and the swim reminded me of swimming in Lake Taupo, at Ironman New Zealand. Another nice thing about Leadman is that the small number of triathletes (about 360 total) meant very manageable swim waves (about 65 per wave), so there was no real shenanigans in the swim. I did get passed by some 250k swimmers, but they were very nice and didn't swim over me. At some point I did notice getting slowly passed by a very pale female swimmer (no wetsuit), who did have a nice layer of natural insulation going for her. I kept waiting for my right shoulder to start complaining with a lot of pain, but I focused on stroking with a bit of external rotation, which seems to help minimize the impingement, and I finished the swim with a pretty good time for me -- 45:06, but of course way behind the good swimmers.
Bike: The only real "complaint" I had about this race is that the changing tent for the men (yeah, it could be coed as well -- see Ironman Austria!) was very cramped, with stuff/gear bags everywhere, with no benches or chairs to sit on. So everyone either sat on the wet grass or a gear bag or tried to get their wetsuits off and bike clothing on while standing up. A fairly comical madhouse ensued. Suffice to say it was not my fastest T1 transition -- as a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure it was my slowest ever -- about 11 minutes! I will blame it on lack of body glide -- took me forever to get my wetsuit bottom off; and I should have worn my tri shorts (wanted to put them on dry); and I should have used a grocery plastic bag to help get my rain parka on (it took me FOREVER to get my cold, clammy hands through the tight sleeves). Lastly, it took at least 2 minutes to get my light winter gloves on -- full finger biking gloves would have been easier to get on (although probably not nearly as warm -- trade off there). My other mistakes were forgetting to bring bike shoe toe covers -- my feet were frozen the entire ride and half of the run -- and not putting on leg or at least knee warmers. Oh well. I finally got on the Trek Speed Concept 7.5 and madly started climbing up the short hill from the lake to the main highway (to get warm).
I had elected to leave the PowerTap wheel and disc cover at home for this race and use my Hed race wheels with tubular tires -- just to go as light as possible for the long climbs. This turned out to be a pretty good decision, as I felt pretty comfortable on the uphills, and wickedly fast on the long 20 mile downhill from Mt. Bachelor into Bend. I tried to keep the power on about 160 watts (by feel, of course) on the flats and about 200 watts on the uphills. After going through some stretches of feeling pretty leg weary on the first 25 miles, as I started up the climb to Mt. Bachelor pass, my legs started to respond pretty well. My mental imagery was "just lift the knees" and that seemed to keep my cadence relatively high and I passed quite a few athletes on the climbs and only was only passed by a handful of peeps (along with 3 very fast 250k athletes, who had to do an extra 20 miles out and back). My stomach and energy level was good, except for a couple of periods of mild stomach distress after drinking some gatorade (should have just stuck with the water). No real drama on the bike; the weather stayed dry (the sun even peeked out occasionally); the scenery was of course stunning, and the aid stations were well stocked and every 10 miles or so. Leg warmers would have probably helped a little, but I really wasn't that cold until the long 20 mile downhill leg into Bend... man, oh man, was I either pedaling hard or tucked into the best aerodynamic position I could muster, to get off that bike as fast as I could. By that point, my neck was really getting tired of being aero (thank goodness the lack of traffic and other bikers let me look down for 10 seconds at a time before peeking back up) and my crotch was saying "you need a more comfortable saddle!!!" to my brain. There is nothing like feeling like a frozen popsicle to motivate you to go as fast as possible down a screaming downhill at speeds which you would never attempt normally. I finally saw Summit High School (T2), with T's smiling face on the corner, after about 3:33 of biking. I had gone from 105th place after the swim to 68th place, and was just very, very happy to get off that bike and start running to warm myself up!
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| "My goodness, where are my feet?" |
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Note the nice cross-country skiing gloves!
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Run: When I got off the bike and tried to run into the changing tent, I wasn't surprised to find that I could not feel my feet at all -- a rather unpleasant feeling, but one that I have experienced in some cooler triathlons before. After shedding the gloves, beanie/helmet, and rain parka (the weather was still dry, yeahhh!), and putting on the 'ol Newtons, I stumbled out of the tent. T was right there and had a quizzical look on her face as she said, "What's wrong?". I mumbled "Can't feel my feet", tried to smile, and then hobbled onward...
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| Running on popsicles--not fun! |
Of course, right away, some Masters guy which I had blazed past on the last mile into T2 comes screaming up besides me and starts to take off at a pretty good pace (which was probably only 7:45s). Usually, given that situation on most long triathlons, I let similar yahoos take off, (only to see them again in a few miles), but given my frozen popsicle feet, I was all about getting my body temperature up, so I took off in "hot" pursuit. Which was very uncomfortable with my numb feet! But it did start to warm me up, and I started to get into a nice rhythm with a 2-2 breathing pattern. At the second aid station, I took a little gatorade (I hadn't brought along any UCAN because the run was so short -- about 7.5 miles) which seemed to give me again a bit of stomach distress, but nothing too serious. At about mile 2, my running rival seemed to turn it on a bit and got about 10 yards ahead, but then he stalled out. We started to hit some uphills at mile 3 or so, and that's when I overtook him (thank you, uphill evolution running technique!), and I never saw him again until the finish line (about 3 minutes after I crossed). Everyone on the 2 or 3 short steep uphills was walking -- but I kept running, albeit pretty slowly -- and I made up a lot of ground, and kept up a steady pace on the flats and then really tried to run quickly on the downhills.
About mile 4, my body wanted to shift to a 1--2 breathing pattern, and my brain happily accommodated. It was also around that point that I went to a tried and true mental "trick" of running to a point about 20 yards ahead, feeling a brief moment of victory, and then picking another landmark and repeating ad nauseum. Sounds silly now but... it works! I also had some good motivating thoughts, thinking about the mexican food and Deschutes Brewery beer waiting for me in the athlete's garden! And the other nice part about the run was picking people off one by one... with about 500m left, I passed a guy who looked fairly "mature" and I made sure I passed him with some authority, just to make sure he dismissed any thoughts about racing me... it seemed to work as he didn't respond. Turned out that he was the other guy in my 55-59 yr age group! Not that it really mattered... in the Leadman, it's all about getting a belt buckle by beating the qualification cutoff -- there are no age group awards. But of course, it's good to know that you are first in your age group -- and not D.F.L.! :-) In any case, I finally had the finish arch in sight, so I zipped up my nice Life Time Fitness bike jersery and tried to look good running across the line.
T was waiting with open arms in the finish chute (something you won't see at a 70.3 race!) and I happily surrendered my timing chip and accepted a nice, solid finisher's medal. Run split was 56:29, the 26th fastest run time (out of 148 finishers), and I finished in 5:28:30, 44th overall. Felt pretty good with that, although with a decent swim time and normal T1 time I should have been under 5:15 (which was the advertised small belt buckle cutoff time). The finish line vibe was great, with a nice band for live music entertainment, great food/drink (including aforementioned Deschutes beer), great swag, and a farmer's market. After re-loading on plenty of carbs/protein, we made our way back to our hotel for a much needed hot shower and change of clothing, before returning to the finish area to cheer on the 250 finishers and the awards ceremony. By then, the race organizers had decided to relax the 125 small belt buckle times by 45 minutes, so I qualified to get a nice belt buckle momento, which was a perfect way to top off a memorable day. As we saw the 250 Epic finishers straggle across the line, we cheered them for their tremendous accomplishment under some pretty tough conditions (all of the 250 racers got thoroughly drenched on the bike with rain and hail). I have done 12 Ironman triathlons, but that Leadman 250 is one triathlon that I would approach very, very carefully and with a lot of respect!!!
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| With Cathy Yndestad, who smoked the course in 4:44! |
So, here are my "bottom line" recommendations and lessons learned from the 2013 Leadman 125:
- Prepare for poor weather conditions; know how to layer; and how to put the layers on quickly and how to take them off as you warm up. Don't neglect toe covers, leg warmers, and good quality bike gloves. Practice swimming in cold water.
- UCAN again proved to work beautifully as my nutrition for this race. For all future races, I will take a small gel flask with UCAN (mixed as a paste) to avoid any possibility of stomach issues.
- Racing without a power meter (and GPS on the run) is OK if you are experienced with racing with "feel" and can sometimes result in better race results (be careful with this one!).
- Leadman is a beautiful venue; a small, well-organized race with an old school triathlon feeling; very friendly atmosphere, great swag. And it doesn't cost an arm and a leg like the WTC triathlons! But don't let the friendly vibe fool you - it is a grueling race; it can be cold; it's at altitude, the bike and run are hilly, and you can be very lonely on the bike at times. But Bend, Oregon is absolutely charming, and this race should be on your bucket list -- especially if you are a strong biker!
