A New Style of Racing

This Saturday I will be taking part in my first of hopefully many Olympic distance ITU-style races. Most of you triathlon-savvy people know what this is, but for you that are not familiar with the wide world of triathlon (thanks to you for reading my blog by the way...it means a lot), ITU racing is a fast, exciting, and unpredictable experience.  I will explain...

Almost all triathlons in the age group division and all full and half-Ironman triathlons are non-drafting on the bike.  In any race, you can swim directly behind someone in the water, catching a draft and can run in a group like a road race to pace off each other.  Drafting in the water or on the run makes a difference in effort, and is almost impossible to enforce a non-drafting rule, but it isn't as substantial as drafting on the bike.  There are 2 main reasons age group races and Ironman races do not allow drafting.  Number 1 is safety.  In non-drafting races, athletes usually race on time-trial (TT) bikes, shown here, that are equipped with long aero-bars for positioning the body as aerodynamic as possible, and tough to maneuver.  Crashes are more likely to happen if a group of athletes on TT bikes are riding close to each other duking it out.  These races have anywhere from 300-3000 participants.  Reason number 2 is to promote individual efforts.  Imagine if 2 Ironman athletes got out of the water together and were equally strong on the bike.  The second guy could hypothetically follow the first guy's draft for 112 miles.  That just wouldn't be fair.  So drafting on the bike is illegal in most triathlons out there.

ITU-style racing is different.  ITU (International Triathlon Union) rules allow for drafting on the bike.  This changes the whole complexity of the race.  Biking in a group is much easier than biking by yourself.  Have you ever watched stages of the Tour de France where there is a breakaway of 2 or 3 riders five minutes ahead of the big peleton?  If you have, then you know that 9.5 times out of 10, those 2 or 3 guys are caught by the end of the race.  Because drafting on the bike is allowed, more emphasis is put on the swim and run.  If someone can get out of the water with the front group, he will have an easier time navigating the 40k bike course by drafting off of someone versus someone who finishes the swim 30 seconds or a minute back and has to ride by himself.


In this type of racing, more than non-draft racing, every second counts, making swim-bike and bike-run transitions more important.  If someone gets out of the water with the front group and takes 10 extra seconds putting their helmet on and grabbing their bike, by the time they are riding the group is gone.


I come from a running background, so my goal for this Saturday in Seattle is to swim as fast as I can for 1500 meters to finish close to the front of the 60-man field.  If I can make it into the front group, or the chase group with a chance to catch the front group, and conserve enough energy on the bike, it puts me in a position to take advantage of that running background and have a good result.  I also want to take away from this race the experience of draft-legal racing.  The more I do it, the more comfortable I become.


It will be an exciting day!  I'm really looking forward to experiencing a new style of racing.  Next week, I will have a race report up from Seattle.  Thanks for reading.

The Rock, Hills and Sand - Escape from Alcatraz

If there were any nerves floating through my body as I was on the San Francisco Belle motoring out to the start of my first ever professional triathlon, they were quickly thrown out the window 4 minutes before the starting horn.  At 7:26am I had drank my last sip of water, had my GU and was slipping into my wetsuit.  I asked for a zip and halfway up the zipper got caught.  I brought stretch cords hoping to really have a good warm-up before jumping into the 52-degree water, but I was relegated to sweating profusely in my unzipped wetsuit as it took 2 people to fix my zipper.

With so much adrenaline pumping and a flurry of arms, I didn't really notice the freezing water of the San Francisco Bay.  Triathlon's super swimmers of the field took off, but I settled into my pace, which conveniently happened to be the pace of most of the pro women in the field.  I had a group to swim with!  The Bay has some crazy currents going on so sighting was tough at times.  I would keep my head down for a few strokes, look up and the group would be way to my right.  I would then swim hard to catch them, put my head down for a few more strokes and have to do that all over again.  I then decided to sight more often and make a better effort to stay on the feet of the group.  A few times it got physical and usually I don't mind bumping elbows or whacking someone in the head in a triathlon swim.  It's part of the game...I get it too.  But I was in a group with most of the pro women.  A couple times I would hit one of them and think "oh sorry," but not really.  Like I said, it's part of the game!  I had my goggles and a swim cap as a disguise.

I got out of the water and made the 1000-meter trek to T1.  As I ran along the path, I saw some of my competition already take off on the bike, but as I got to my bike and headed out myself, I saw other competition still making their way to T1.  I was in a good spot!  The Escape bike course is extremely demanding.  For the entire 18-mile course you are either going uphill, going downhill, turning, or on terrible pavement.  There is no getting into a rhythm on this course.  At mile 4, Kenny Rakestraw came up next to me on one of the climbs.  I thought to myself "perfect, him and I will work together for the rest of the race."  Well, I was with him for another 2 or 3 miles and then my legs decided to stop working.  The hills had gotten to me and Kenny slowly started to pull away.  I found myself in a pack with 2 other riders that stuck together for the rest of the ride.  I was 23rd out of the water and I believe I had made up 1 or 2 places on the bike.

After racking the bike and heading out for the run, I immediately dropped the 2 other cyclists in my pack.  Two other runners were in sight ahead of me, but that was about it.  At mile 2, I caught the 2 runners, but could not drop them.  The damage was already done to my legs from the ride and I could not get them to respond.  The 3 of us ran together all the way down Lincoln, onto the beach for the 1.5 miles of sand running, then up the sand ladder.  The infamous sand ladder consists of just under 400 log steps laid across the sand to aid the climb from the beach 400 feet back up to Lincoln Ave.  My coach told me before the race that no matter how terrible I felt, he wanted my last 5k to be fast.  After the sand ladder, I gathered myself and ran at the back of our 3-person pack until the 3 miles to go sign.  At that point I took off.  My surge dropped one of the two.  Three minutes later I put in another surge and dropped the last guy.  I thought to myself "where had this speed been the rest of the race?"  I kept that pace all the way to the finish line for a 19th place finish, almost catching 18th.

Overall, it was a great first experience as a pro triathlete.  The field was stacked with past Ironman and Half Ironman world champs, a few Olympians and local studs like Leto, Rakestraw and Dahlz.  I want to thank my dad who flew out all the way from Detroit to see my first pro race.  He's without a doubt, my super-fan.  Also, thanks to my girlfriend Rebecca for all the support and cheering her head off out there, and to everyone along the course screaming for me.  There is a lot of work to be done, lots to learn, but the fact that my friends and guys I train with finished on the podium motivates me to work harder and stick with it.  Next up for me is a trek up to Seattle area for my first ever ITU draft-legal race on June 25th.  After that is another ITU draft-legal competition back in San Francisco on Treasure Island.  Thanks for reading everyone and thanks so much for the support!

Success at Wildflower!

This season has been about change.  This is the first full year under my new coach, Brian Priddin, and therefore a new approach to base training and learning the sport of triathlon.  For the most part, it's been about setting a strong foundation for the rest of my triathlon career vs. being ready to race the next race on the calendar.  I have seen dramatic improvements in my training and was very much looking forward to putting this all on display in the first triathlon of the season.  Wildflower has been a huge star on my schedule since the course beat me down last year.  Last year I wasn't ready for the demanding hills and heat that come with the intense competition.  I let the conditions get the best of me.  This year was going to be different.  After my little training camp 2 weeks before race day, Brian told me something that I thought about leading up to the race: "you're in such good shape this time around, that even on a bad day, you'll still dominate."  On race day, it gave me a sense of relaxation, and looking back at it, I was never stressed out once during the entire race because of my confidence in the work I had done.

This year, Rebecca was able to join me down south.  This also kept me relaxed and helped out a ton to have my girlfriend and partner in crime there with me.  She's been such a huge supporter in my triathlon journey and it was awesome to share this important weekend with her.  We swam and ran together in the days leading up to the race.  We just had fun together and it took my mind off the race.  Sports Basement also played a major role in the weekend, as they provided a secure place to pop our tent and took care of meals and drinks.  One less thing to worry about during the craziness of Wildflower.

I was very calm race morning.  I don't get nervous for races myself, but sometimes all the nervous people around me in transition make me feel a little anxious.  It was a good morning to have my iPod for warm up.  I was in my own little zone.

Swim:

I was more confident and looking forward to my swim for this race than any other triathlon I have ever competed in.  I know that I have the strength to find the fast swimmers after the horn and stay on their feet.  After a crazy 100 meters or so, 3 or 4 guys took off.  They gapped me and I knew I couldn't get them, but a guy swam up next to me going at a decent pace that I thought I could hold the rest of the swim.  We swam stroke for stroke, shoulder to shoulder for about 4 minutes and I thought, this is stupid; I'm working much harder than I have to and we're going the same pace.  I slowed down for a few strokes, tucked right in behind him and let him do the work.  I followed him in his slipstream the whole way until about 400 meters to go.  We were on the last long straightaway and because its a long way, there were kayaks stationed along the straightaway for sighting.  Even though I was drafting, I still looked up every now and then to see where we were going.  I noticed he was headed right for the kayak and I could see the kayaker trying to move out of the way.  I immediately broke from my leader and as he ran straight into the kayak I took off.  I've been working a lot in the pool on 200s all out so I got into 200 all out mode and hammered to the end of the swim.  My swim time was 20:00-flat, the 24th fastest swim among all the men for the day and a huge 1-minute PR in the 1500-meter.  I had set up the rest of the race perfectly and took all that confidence into the bike.

Bike:

My strategy on the bike was to keep it chill.  In training, I've had some back problems going from the bike to the run and I didn't want that to creep up on me on this day.  I didn't want to hammer up the monster hills too hard, draining my legs, but wanted to keep a high, intense tempo on the downhills and flats.  Because I was the 4th wave to start the triathlon behind the men's and women's collegiate waves and the under 24 men's wave, I could use the people ahead of me to key off of.  Everyone feels fast when they constantly pass people.  I had a bike split goal of 1:05, but it was a little windy and when I hit half way, I knew that was a little out of reach.  Having 1 of my 2 water bottles pop out in the 3rd mile of the bike didn't help either (I need to figure out a better hydration situation on the bike.  Any suggestions?).  On the way back, I focused on staying relaxed and getting ready for the run.  My bike split of 1:07:29 ended up being the 3rd fastest of the day.

Run:

I had a great transition, which was key for me.  I had some blister issues with my shoes the last few weeks leading up to Wildflower, so I decided to put socks on in T2.  I figured the time I would lose in T2 putting socks on would be less than the time I would lose if I ran with blisters for 10k.  After looking at the results, my T2 time was 3rd fastest out of the top 10 finishers.  My first mile was 5:20.  Mile 2 was 5:25 and I thought, crap I'm slowing down.  Thankfully my back was holding up, but my legs were very tired.  At that point, I told myself to work it hard for 10 minutes.  At the 5k sign, I was over 17 minutes, but I knew the 5k sign could not have been in the right spot.  At around that point, some collegiate guy from Cal Poly who had stopped to walk a bit, I think his shoe might have been untied, started running with me.  We were shoulder to shoulder for about 800 meters and this gave me my second wind.  This helped a ton and I set a new goal of hammering the rest of the run and dropping this guy.  After all, I was racing the clock.  I had no idea what my splits were for the rest of the run, but ended up splitting 32:36 for the 10k.  That time, from a little research (and I think this is correct) is the 3rd fastest 10k ever recorded on the Wildflower Olympic course.  I was 2 minutes faster than anyone else that day.

I knew that around 2:02 has won the race the last 4 years.  The last 3 winners are my training partners and friends John Dahlz, Kyle Leto, and Kenny Rakestraw, who are now all pro triathletes and having very successful careers.  It's a huge honor to win this race.  My time was 2:02:26.  I thought I had won it until I checked the results 20 minutes after I finished to discover I was beat by exactly a minute by a dude named Dylan McNeice.  Dylan is a pro triathlete from New Zealand who has raced in World Cup events and even the World Championship race for his country.  He is one of the best swimmers in the world triathlon circuit which explains how he put a full 3 minutes on me in the swim (I was 20 seconds faster on the bike and 2 minutes faster on the run).  It's a tough pill to swallow taking runner-up at Wildflower, but the silver lining is that I qualified for my pro card.  It's something I've been chasing since I took 4th amateur in 2 races last year that top 3 go pro and crashing in a 3rd race where I was set up for a great result.

Now it's time to race the big boys in the sport as a professional triathlete!  Next up is Escape from Alcatraz in San Francisco, an event I've done twice before but always looked up to the pros in awe on the start boat.  After that, at the end of June I head up to Monroe, WA for my first ever draft-legal Pan-American Cup race against other pros from all over the world!

Thanks to everyone for the support on facebook, twitter and in person.  It feels so good to have people interested in the sport and interested in how I do.  It keeps me motivated.
Thanks for reading.

Wildflower Prep...1 week to go!

First off, my apologies for not updating this on a more regular basis.  I could try to come up with some obscure, sympathy-seeking excuse, but in reality, there is non.  What I can tell you, though, is that I've been working really hard and I'm feeling ready to rock it next weekend down in SLO.  This past Monday and Tuesday, Rebecca and I made the trip down south to meet my coach, Brian Priddin, for a little mini-camp on the course.  I've put in the work, so it was time to see the course and fine-tune some things before race day.



Monday morning was the ride on the bike course.  The way out was 5 minutes hard, 1 minute easy.  After the turn around, the way back was race effort.  Last year's race was so hard for me and those hills out there can be very challenging.  I've been doing 100% of my riding on my Felt TT bike since early February when my road bike was stolen.  I see it as a blessing in disguise.  Last year, I did most of my prep for Wildflower on my road bike.  This time around, I'm used to going up hill and going down some crazy descents on my TT bike.  I'm more comfortable and feel a lot faster on my race bike.  The hills this time seemed smaller and more manageable.  I feel I can power up and over them much better.  Like I said, blessing in disguise, although after May 1st, I'll have to pony up some money and buy a new road bike.  The other reason I feel so comfy on my race bike is the fit I got from TT bike fit export Joe Santos at Davis Wheelworks.  The guy works with some of the best triathletes and professional cyclists in the area.  He makes them really fast on their bikes, and from what I've noticed so far, I feel like a different rider on the same bike I've been riding for 2.5 years.  It's pretty cool!


Next on Monday was a swim.  We practiced some starts and finises at the bottom of the big boat launch.  It was nice to be in a wetsuit again.  I hadn't put one on since my last race of last year back in October.  Brian paddled alongside me in his kayak.  It felt like I was following the lead boat in a race.  I'm not THAT good a swimmer, but maybe someday I'll experience drafting off the lead boat in a real race like Kyle Leto!


Monday evening was my run workout around the 10k course.  Workout was miles 1, 3, 5&6 hard, with miles 2 and 4 cruising recovery (still decent pace).  My run split in the race last year was 34:52.  That evening I ran with my heavy trainers on, and took 2 of the 6 miles at an easier than race pace speed....and ran faster than my race split last year.  That means 2 things:  1.) I sucked last year...and 2.) I'm fit this year!


Tuesday was a series of mini-triathlons to get comfortable with transitions at real speed on the real course.  After doing this, I am now confident in my first and last little bits of each discipline.  It makes for less things to think about on race day.


The rest of this week and next week will be more sharpening of the knife and focusing on feeling good going into the weekend.  I'm excited to get my official race season started.  This race has been the star on my calendar for a while.  I'm ready to roll!


(Shameless plug (I know, I'm a dork) - follow me on twitter @bauer_andrew for more day-to-day training updates)


Thanks for reading.