Good Times and Noodle Salad
San Jose International Triathlon
1250m swim / 40k bike / 10k run
Lake Almaden, San Jose, California
June 26, 2005

It sucks to have to take your own advice. I wrote this book telling people how they could do and love triathlons no matter what their body type: it didn't matter if they were slow or fat, or if they came last, or if they had to walk their bikes up the hills, or walk themselves on the run. "Enjoy the experience," I wrote. "The important thing is that you're out there moving your body and having fun." Well, that is all true, but now that I'm much slower and fatter than I was when I wrote those things, and the possibility of being the actual last finisher in a race is pretty real, I find myself feeling a little whiny about it. "I'm sloooowwww! I'm faaaaaaaaat! I don't want to be laaaaaast. Waaaaaah!" But my higher self relishes the irony of it all and strives to enjoy the generous helping of semi-instant karma.

In my first two races of the season, I was still sort of taking the measure of where I was. What could I reasonably expect to do in my new (old) shape? How would my body react to the stresses of multi-hour effort? Would it still be fun? The preliminary answers to these questions were:
1) I could do the same things, just slower.
2) I would not keel over on the course, but I would start to feel overall "body ache" fatigue sooner.
3) Yes, but (I must confess) not quite as much fun as being comfortably in the middle of the pack. Basically, though it was still "good times!" as my SVTC bud Suzi likes to holler in the middle of track workouts. "And noodle salad!' I reply, if I have the breath.

Overall, these findings were encouraging. I might have lost speed, but I still had strength and endurance, the stubbornness essential to a far-below-average endurance athlete, and a sense of humor. The slight diminution of fun was partly due to the nagging sense of failure in having re-gained weight and partly due to the fact that it gets lonely out there at the tail end of the race. But I was still feeling pleasant anticipation at the thought of the San Jose International Triathlon, my local race, my club's backyard party, on roads that I've ridden and driven hundreds of times. I had cleaned and lubed my bike chain, stuck non-skid tape onto the bottom of my left bike shoe for a secure dismounting platform, had a couple of good quick workouts over the course of the week, and even volunteered at registration the day before. I was ready.

Of course, that didn't stop me from thinking "I could just stay in bed" at 4:59 on Sunday morning. But I quashed that thought before it could take root and stumbled into the bathroom for the pre-race rituals. BodyGlide, check. Deodorant, check. Hair elastics, check. Out into the kitchen to make up a gloppy cup of non-fat yogurt, milk, and quick-cooking oats. Mix 'em together, let 'em sit for about 15 minutes, sweeten, consume. Bottle of Cytomax, check. Bottles of water, check. Endurox for after the race, check. Most everything was already packed into my blue backpack, so by 5:25 or so I was out the door

Like the last time I raced SJIT, the weather was slightly foreboding in the early morning, foggy and cool, with a pretty stiff breeze blowing out of the east. Overall I like that weather, but I knew the headwind would be a challenge on the first 7-8 miles of the bike. I milled about with the hundred or so SVTC-ers in transition, and met up with new tri-friend Sarah from Berkeley, who was here for her very first tri. I talked with the SVTC-ers about Suzi, and Julie and Debbie and Maaike and Warren and the other SVTC folks doing Ironman Coeur d'Alene that day. We'd be home taking naps and they'd still be in the middle of their bike ride. Perhaps not everyone's idea of Good Times and Noodle Salad, but I knew they had all trained like crazy and were looking forward to it. After all the socializing, I finally got serious about getting ready to race. I got my wetsuit on to keep warm, and went over to watch the first waves of racers depart the sandy beach. Dang! That start cannon was loud. And it was only a little thing about 16 inches long and an inch and a half in diameter.

The swim course in Lake Almaden is funky. The lake's not very large, so swimmers have to make almost a complete circuit of its shoreline, then make a sharp left, swim 100 meters or so, make a sharp right around a buoy in the middle of the lake, and pull hard for the finish, about 150 meters away. I watched the fast folks do almost the whole swim to make sure I remembered the turns right, then I arranged my wetsuit zipper and my hair elastics and my swim cap and my earplugs and bounded into the water for a warmup. Actually, I don't do much serious swimming during my warmup. What I really like is splashing around, bobbing high in the water, buoyed by neoprene, looking back at the shore and watching all the black bipedal bugs with different-colored heads milling about on shore. Starting in the last wave, I had plenty of time to bob.

Eventually, though, the starting cannon roared, and we surged out into the water. The ample spring rains had filled the reservoir nicely, and there was less green scum and goose poop than I remembered from the past. So that was nice. I wasn't really feeling my swim stroke, though. Although I had adjusted the sleeves and shoulders of my wetsuit with painstaking care, I just didn't feel like I had my full range of motion, and it was throwing me off. My deltoids quickly tired of pulling against the neoprene, and my arm and body movements were jerky and stiff. I simply must lose some weight (or get a new, sleeveless wetsuit) before Santa Cruz Sentinel.

Around the island at the far side of the lake, I had already lost the main group, and there were just a few other stragglers behind me. Since we were the last wave, the lifeguards on surfboards started paddling alongside the stragglers, which kind of irritated me. I wasn't planning on drowning or anything. I was swimming within myself, I was just slow. I wanted them out of my space, so I could concentrate on my rhythm and my breathing and sighting the next buoy.

I forgot to look at my watch as I staggered up the beach at the finish, and I was fighting too hard with my wetsuit to worry about it, but I felt like I'd had a slower swim than I wanted. I had just had my fastest training swim of the year on Friday, a real breakthrough workout, and I knew that my watery progress was nowhere near what I'd experienced then. No time to reflect though - off with the wetsuit and on with the helmet and shoes! The transition was laid out extremely confusingly - the one real flaw of this race is that J & A changes the transition area every year - and it seemed to me that I had the longest possible run to the bike exit.

I was out to Coleman Road when I finally looked at the watch. Forty-three minutes? Holy crap! How long WAS I in that water anyway? I had been hoping to get out of there in 30 minutes or so, but clearly I had taken longer than that. But the great thing about the process of racing is that you don't have a lot of time to worry about what you just did because you're quite busy doing what you're doing. If you see what I mean. And what I was doing at that time was fighting the headwind.

In contrast to my first two races of the year, where I didn't have a working heart rate monitor or bike computer, I now had both of those things, plus my new bke computer sports a cadence sensor, to see how many times per minute my pedals go around in a circle. I decided to base my into-the-wind bit on cadence as much as possible and not worry too much about speed. You can get frustrated trying to go fast into the wind. Frustrated and tired. So I tried to keep the cadence up around 90 rpm, a rhythm which works well for me.

The sun wasn't even threatening to come out yet, and I was actually feeling a little chilly with the wind and the clouds and all. And even though I was trying not to get my legs too tired, I was really feeling the grind of going into the wind. The only good thing about this part of the course was that the San Jose police were controlling all the intersections and we could zoom right through every light. About eight miles of cold, wind, and cops at intersections, and the turnaround finally came. We were out in the fields south of town by then, so only a few crows and red-winged blackbirds saw how gosh-darn fast I was going after I turned and put the wind at my back. I let out a whoop as I hit 23 miles per hour. "Yeah baby! That's what I'm talking about!"

I wished we could ride along like that forever, but after just a few miles we had to make the left turn onto Bailey, where the only real hill of the course looms straight up out of the valley floor. I wasn't sure if I had the legs to get up it without walking, since I had been forced to walk at each of my previous races, but I thought I remembered that it wasn't as mind-shatteringly steep as some hills are. I gulped an energy gel and geared down as the hill started to rise. I was only about a hundred yards into the climb when I got down to my lowest gear. I had about 1600 yards to go, and no relief was going to come from my rear cassette. I need a bike with a triple, I thought to myself. A triple chainring or "granny gear" on the front gears really helps the slow, the fat, the old, and those with cranky knees and back. But I don't have that bike. Yet.

My cadence was down to 29 rpm at one point as I pushed the pedals painfully. I tried to keep it over 30, but that's still a grind. To my relief, though, the climb was no longer and no steeper than I remembered, and it was really only a few minutes before I got to the top, with no walking. Now for the fun part - a rolling, swooping ride through the hills back into the Almaden Valley with the wind at my back. I almost made it up to 40 mph on one downhill, and my average speed started to creep up a little. I was hoping to get into T2 at about the 2:30 mark, leaving me almost a full 90 minutes to complete the run and still get in under four hours. Hey, it was a goal.

I was pleased to see that I was going to have plenty of time to do my run. I was turning back onto Almaden Expressway in 2:15, and back at transition a couple minutes later. Again the route out of transition seemed insanely roundabout and complicated, but I was happy to be on the last leg. The speakers along the course blared "Running on Empty" as I shuffled along. I wasn't empty yet, but I wasn't exactly full of high-octane either.

The circuitous run course took me behind the expo tents and stage and down the bike path for what seemed like a really long time. I knew I'd have to come all the way back and then go around half the lake, along the creek the other way, and all the way down to the percolation ponds and back before I'd be done. As I have done before, I pondered how shockingly large a distance 6.2 miles is when you have to do it on your own feet. On the bike path section, I kept passing and being passed by a crew of Team in Training participants, young Latino guys and a girl, who seemed to be hurting but were determined. One of them had a recurring hamstring cramp, so I'd see him down on the ground a couple times with one of his buddies stretching his leg out. About the third time we met up, one of them announced, "Yeah, we're Team Cramp." The sun had come out and it was starting to get warm, warm enough to pour water over my head at the first aid station.

After mile 2, Team Cramp got a surge of energy and pulled away from me, but I was OK with that. I was increasing my time between walk breaks to about 7 minutes, and the big sweep around the lake went by smoothly. The mile 3 marker was hidden around a curve, but I knew by my time that it had to be there, and when it appeared I checked it off gratefully. Almost halfway home, and I was on pace to break the four-hour mark with at least 10 minutes to spare. On I trotted, panting encouragement to the runners who were on their way back. Mike 4's not until you get almost halfway around the perc pond, out in the middle of a flat expanse of dirt and rocks, under a freeway, between two major thoroughfares. Not the most scenic part of the race, although the water in the pond is startlingly clear and turquoise. I saw Team Cramp up ahead, alternating walking and running. I think they were fresher than I was, but it was hard to tell. There wasn't anyone else out there.

I checked my heart rate monitor at every walk break, and I was ticking over at over 162-163 beats per minute, which is not maximum effort, but it's about right for me for a 10k run. Much higher than that, and the lactic acid builds up in my muscles faster than my system can clear it, and that hurts. A lot. That magic pulse rate where the buildup starts is what's known as the lactate threshold, and in endurance sports you want to stick your heart rate right below that threshold and keep it there as long as you can.

As I headed toward the mile 5 marker, though, I was ready to take the ol' heart rate a beat or two higher. I didn't have much further to go, as the volunteers pointed out enthusiastically. I appreciate their support, I always do, but really, I do know where I am on the course pretty much at all times, especially when there are mile markers. No matter. I hit mile 5, calculated that I'd take one more walk break with about .75 miles to go, and concentrated on breathing evenly and shuffling along with the absolute minimum of wasted motion. Right at 3:42, I slowed to a walk and did a few stretches, bending over to loosen my back muscles. I thought I was pretty much on my own out there. Certainly there weren't any runners anywhere near me. I had seen one white-haired woman a few minutes back.

I straightened up and there were Mom and Dad at the side of the trail about 100 yards ahead. Dang! They caught me stretching and walking! Now Mom's going to think I'm having chest pains. I immediately picked back up to a jog and greeted them cheerfully. And I was cheerful. I was almost done and it was extremely nice to see them out there. I stretched out my hand to Dad for a high five, but he grabbed it instead and squeezed hard as he started to jog along with me. "Don't strain yourself, Dad," I warned, "this is a pretty blistering pace." "Don't talk," he replied. "Save your breath for the running." Dad jogged by my side for another 100 yards or so before peeling off. Inspired, I kept a steady pace back around the lake. About a quarter mile from the finish, I came up behind Team Cramp. "Come on, Team Cramp!" I urged. "Let's go!" They seemed to have been waiting for this signal and took off like purple-clad bats out of hell. I couldn't keep up with them, but I could pick up my feet a little faster and a little higher. Up over the little wooden bridge and around the last corner, and there, there was the big, beautiful finish arch. There was some weird preliminary arch too, which I knew wasn't the finish, so I kept on running as hard as I could to the end. OK, now I was definitely up over my lactate threshold, but I crossed the line and that, as they say, was that. 3:49 and some few seconds, I saw.

I stood in the finishers' corral, breathing extremely hard. The volunteers handed me Amino Vital, which is a pretty weird tasting sports drink usually, but it tasted quite good at the time. They took my timing chip off my ankle, and I stumbled out into the world. Sarah from Berkeley was there, with the unmistakable glow of a person who has just finished her first triathlon. She didn't even look like she broke a sweat, either. I hate that! She had a great race and was clearly hooked on the sport, so that was gratifying. Dad showed up soon after, and Sherri from the Santa Cruz tri club, and we stood around and chatted about the heat, the course, the race in general. I felt like I should be moving around more to ward off stiffness, but I didn't, hoping that the Amino Vital would handle all the recovery for me.

Dad and everyone drifted off, and I drifted over to the stir-fried noodles and veggies - almost noodle salad, but warm. They looked good, but I couldn't eat much yet. I stuck around for most of the age-group and collegiate awards, feeling a pleasant glow and enjoying the sun. I felt pretty good, even when I got back to transition to pack up. Not as severely stupid as usual. Maybe I didn't work hard enough? Maybe I could have gone a little harder? If I still had functioning brain cells, could I really have given it my all out there? I decided that maybe I was just getting a little smarter about how to pack up my gear, and I headed home for a well-earned shower. Meanwhile, the IM Coeur d'Alene contingent was cycling around the mountains of Idaho. Good times, Suzi. Good times.