Oceanside 70.3

2010 training started off well. With my new 8-5 work hours winter cycling now means indoor time on my trainer during the weekdays and hoping for descent weather so I can get outside on the weekends. My savior this winter was Netflix as I was blasting through 5-6 DVDs a week to help stimulate otherwise uneventful indoor trainer sessions. I'm a big fan of "The Tudors" and "Rome", worth checking out. After the much anticipated daylight savings time change in mid-March I could once again get outside during the week to ride after work. This gave me a few weeks of consistent outdoor training before my 1st race of the season, Oceanside 70.3.

The week before Oceanside was different than my previous 2 trips out for this race. This time Aim and I drove out to Irvine a week before the race and spent the entire week moving her into her new apartment for her year-long stint at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising (FIDM - aka the Harvard of fashion schools, go Aims!). Come race morning something was clearly missing from my attitude as I just wasn’t in the mood to compete and really had minimal desire to do the race. Fortunately I started to get my competitive urge a few minutes before my wave entered the water to start the race.

The swim was par for the course, good time and feeling ready to ride. Out on the bike I had decided earlier this season that I wanted to really push the bike on this course to see where things were. This is a decently tough bike course with a good amount of climbing and some nice headwinds over the last 10-miles or so. I really pushed the bike over the entire course and while my legs were tired and a little achy at the end they were still pushing hard so thats a good sign. I ended up beating my previous bike splits on this course by 10 and 14 mins, while averaging 261 watts. Not too bad.

Now the run. My run PR on this course is a 1:24 from 2 years ago, today was not a PR-run day. Starting out it was a pain, I could never get into my rhythm and I really had no fight in me to push harder or run faster. My run split ended up being a mediocre 1:29. I crossed the finish line with a total time of 4:33, 11 minutes better than my 2 previous attempts at this course.

All in all it was a descent day that reminded me of the importance of mental preparation for every race. Without my mental focus I was never able to push myself as hard as I should have been able to go or to suffer as much as I needed to. Typically the week before any race Aim is totally selfless and dedicates herself to Team Maxwell, taking care of me and helping to ensure I’m perfectly prepared for race day. This time was different as Aim’s move was our focus the week before the race, and that’s the only it could have been with her move to CA. Given the fact we would be living apart for year and this was some of our last time together before she is living in CA full-time, there’s no way I could have expected to have complete mental focus on my race. Anyway, long story short, this week gave me a huge appreciation for all the time Aim is there to help me be 110% ready for my races.

The highlight for the race was my bike split matched the bike splits of both Tim Hola and Gordo Byrn - 2 local CO elite triathletes who are consistent top finishers at Kona. Good stuff. Granted my run was about 10 mins slower than theirs, but I know my run was not what it could have been and the fact I’m cycling alongside some fantastic athletes serves as great motivation to lay down rock star training for Kona over the next 6 months. The goal now is to continue to get stronger on the bike so I can match the bike splits of guys like that and then be able to pass them on the run. I have little use for a fast bike split unless I can follow it up with an even faster run. Finishing a race with a sub-par run is a big let down. No more of that action this year.

All in all a good day to get the season started and motivate training for the next 7 months.

Until next time...

-Maxwell

Results
Overall: 79th (2225)
Age Group: 14th (247)

Times: 4:33:06 (28:20, 2:30:40, 1:29:33)