Daybreak Triathlon

Yes, I am still alive!  I apologize for taking so long to post again, and to post about this race (seeing as how it was on September 19th, 2009!)

This race was a fun race to compete in.  The race directors of US Trisports did a fantastic job putting it on.  They even had some issues they had to work around.  Turns out that a few days before the event, the city of Daybreak found some bacteria or something growing in the pond and they had to cancel the swim.  Most directors would have just turned it into a complete duathlon.  They, instead, quickly worked it out to have a very short swim at a local pool and then run to transition where the race would continue on to the run.  Now that you know a little background on the event, I’ll explain how it went for me.  You can also see a highlight video at the end of the post.

Before the Race

One week before this race I was in Australia competing at the Sprint World Championship.  We then went to Sydney for a few days and then flew home.  We would arrive back in Utah on Friday afternoon and then I would race in the Daybreak Triathlon on Saturday.  Well, just to explain the travel process back to the United States, you travel 14 hours all night long.  Instead of actually sleeping during this plane ride, I spent it holding our month and a half old son, Lochten, because he didn’t want to sleep.  He wasn’t screaming or anything, but he just wouldn’t sleep.  So, my wife got about an hour and a half of sleep and I didn’t get any.

We arrived in LA mid morning and then after a busy layover (taking care of a cranky kid), we took our last flight to Utah.  By the time we got home it was about 3 in the afternoon.  We thought we’d have a relaxing evening to recover, but boy, were we wrong.

Lochten decided he was not happy (probably from the plane flights and time changes and everything) and so he was going to scream bloody murder for two hours straight!  Seriously, we were scared.  We didn’t know what was wrong or what to do, so we took him to an urgent car center.  Of course he decided along the way to finally stop screaming.  We got to the doctor, paid the money, and the doctor said he was just fine.  Of course!

Well,  we went back home and within an hour he was back at it again!  This time we kind of just let him because he was supposedly fine.  After a while I felt bad for him and stayed up with him until 2am trying to comfort him.  So, this contributed to one of the reasons why I was not feeling so good for the race: I got 3 hours of sleep over two days.

That night at 1 or 2 am I ended up eating something.  This contributed to the second reason why I didn’t feel so good for the race: not having my food digested well in time (or something – just out of sync) and not to mention the great carb0-loading that I did with airplane food.

The Race

We waited forever to get shuttled over to the pool, where we would do our very short swim, and then I realized I could have walked there in half the time.  Then I tried to squeeze my way into a good spot in line (as swimmers would leave every 5 seconds in a snake style swim).  Each individual had to rate their swim from 1-5 (5 being the best), but I really think they should have had a 5+ or something, because I left about 15-20 people from the beginning – I rated myself a 5 – and I ended up passing 4 people during that 75 yard swim!

Then I was up and out of the pool, threw my shoes on and by the time I was actually running I think there were only about 5 people in front of me.  After having focused a lot on my run during the last month and a half (for Worlds) I was cruising!  Right before entering transition from our mile run I passed the first guy.  However, I thought that there was still another person ahead of him, so I kept working really hard on the bike to catch him.  Finally at the turn around on the bike I realized that was not the case and I had just be chasing a ghost.  It’s ok, it pushed me harder.

I second half of the bike was just about all down hill so I flew back and was off onto the run.  I felt great for the first mile, but by the last mile everything had caught up to me.  I was cramping and felt weak, and just horrible, pretty much.  I knew that I had a big lead so I just tried to stay relaxed and keep moving along.  I pushed it hard at the end to try to finish in under an hour, but came through in one hour, one second (the timing people ended up being off by thirty-some seconds to they based their timing off of my watch and still, somehow they gave me a finishing time of 1:00:07).  I ended up waiting for at least four minutes before anyone else came through the finish line.  In the end I guess there were a few guys who must have started later in the swim and did well.  Also, even with my horrible run, I managed to have the second fastest run time of the day.

Awards

The after party was great and there was a ton of food and goodies.  They had a live band playing on the stage and everyone spread out on the field to watch the awards.  I’ve never seen anything like it at a local race – it was great.  Their was a grand opening of the stores along the street nearby, so it brought a lot of traffic too.

While we were waiting for the awards to begin, my wife went off shopping.  She even came and got me to show me something, but then I told her I didn’t want to miss my award and told her to come back soon.  Well, she didn’t come back soon enough and so she missed me receiving my award.  I got the award photo from Leslie Howlett (winner of the women’s race) and then got another taken by my wife when she showed up.

Like I said, the awards were great and they gave more to the winners than just a medal.  They called up the male and female overall winners and then gave a giant gift basket of personal spa treatment supplies to the female winner.  I laughed to myself thinking it would be hilarious if I got one too.  Well, it wasn’t a moment before I was handed a gift similar gift basket too.  Then I thought, “It’s ok, I’ll just give it to my wife”, but then I saw the it was men’s shampoo, and men’s conditioner, etc.  So, that wasn’t really an option.  So, for the past several months I’ve been using some really cool shampoo and body wash (I don’t really use conditioner), but unfortunately I don’t think I got the benefit that I think most women get from personal spa supplies.

Final times:
Swim/run: 8:37
T1: 37
Bike: 30:08
T2: 32
Run: 20:14
Final: 1:00:07

Here is a highlight video me at the Daybreak Triathlon: