Wasatch Back-breaker

Wasatch Back-breaker

It's taken me a bit of time to process my experience at the Ragnar Wasatch Back relay race. I once again donned the orange and ran with the same team that took me in for the Hood to Coast event last August, the Cho Mamas - a lovely bunch of people; I'd highly recommend running with them, if you ever get the chance.

The general assessment

It was loads of fun. I love the 24-hour race atmosphere that you get with a good, long team relay. The course was drop dead gorgeous from start to finish, and good weather prevailed throughout the weekend. Friendly exchanges with neighboring teams, though overall I felt a bit more isolated as a team than on HTC, and there was definitely a different mix of teams there - more amateur, "neighborhood" teams, I suppose (probably because you don't have to qualify for a Ragnar race, as opposed to HTC), which curiously also lead to a few more colder shoulders (per capita) from groups who were out there trying to prove something. A word to future WB participants of this type - just relax. The NordicTrack or BYU teams are going to beat you, anyway.

The gritty details

Very gritty. Two weeks before race day, I got waylaid for a week by a bout of what can be described as a surprise intestinal fire drill and evacuation out the back door. Running? Forget it. The only running I'd do that week would be to the latrine. What's more, I've been fighting a cough ever since before the Kau Wela tri at the beginning of the month, and I finally got an assessment the Tuesday before the race that it was bronchitis - a relatively common ailment among people training for an endurance event, I'm told, but one that means at least a week of taking it easy. My swim coach told me that, if I did decide to do the WB, I should be careful not to raise my heart rate above 75% of max, and then to do as much as I could to rest in between legs. Did I listen? Sort of. I armed myself with a bronchial anti-inflammatory (Albuterol) and my remaining stash of cough medicine, and made unfulfillable promises to my team that I would cover their vacation time at work if any of them got sick. I also brought along a pillow that I could smother my face with when a bout of coughing would start in.

I ran first in the rotation, which was fun because the race started on the USU track. I was nervous, but optimistic about my conditioning, so at the "ready, set, go" I set off at a comfortable pace that I thought I could maintain for the entire distance (6.9 miles) but that would allow me to pass some dudes. Unfortunately, within about the first 20 seconds of the race, nearly all of them were out of my reach. At least for that leg, which took us through Logan and south through Cache Valley. Highlight of the leg: a 5-year-old boy outside his Logan home who asked me, as I passed him, "Do you want a gwass of water or a spway?" I saw his younger brother a few feet away with a hose, and requested a spray, with which I was rewarded. Lowlight of the leg: the 10-min coughing fit I had after the leg was over. I kept a 8:15 pace though, which I was very happy about.

After a few hours of support during the rest of our van's shift through some gorgeous but challenging terrain, we ended up at Snow Basin for an overpriced dinner and a break. I ended up running into a long-lost friend of mine that I didn't know was going to be there, which was great, and then a few seconds later I ran into the team that my brother was supposed to run in (but checked out of a few weeks prior), peopled by his old high school friends, of whom I have very fond memories, as well.

My second leg started out with a couple of interesting twists - I was stopped after about 100 yards by a race official who told me that about 20 racers had gotten lost very early in the course, in a part that takes you up and behind the Snow Basin lodge and through the trees on a dirt path, so I should be careful and watch out for them. I nearly did get lost, but a guy with a much brighter headlamp than mine came up behind me and pointed me in the right direction, and we headed off down the mountain together, through a snowdrift that lasted about 50 yards or so. The rest of the course, though, was exquisite. While my first leg had been mostly flat, this one took a 1500-ft. plunge over 8 miles on Snowbasin Road toward some town whose name I've forgotten. I actually enjoy a good downhill run, as opposed to a lot of runners I know, and I've never really experienced any knee or ankle pain afterward, so I had actually picked this leg as my preference and had been looking forward to it. I knew that it wouldn't be difficult to keep to my estimated pace, even given my bronchial condition, so I shifted into a mid-gear and cruised for 70 minutes under a bright moon to what turned out to be a great soundtrack churned out by my iPod. Thank you, Rollins Band - Shine, indeed.

I kept about a 8:50 pace over the 8 miles, which given the terrain is pretty slow, but once I started into my 10-minute hacking session at the exchange, I'm glad I didn't push it any faster. If I run this same race next year, I hope that I'm afforded good health and the chance to take another crack at this leg to see what I can really give it.

We had the luxury on our team to have a suite at The Canyons, generously donated by our friends the Stanfields, so after our second shift was done (me mostly sleeping in the back seat), we sped up to Park City and settled in for a good three-hour nap on (can you believe it?!) actual beds. It was great. Thank you, Stanfields.

The next morning, we got off to a bit of a late start out of our opulent accommodations, and ended up arriving at my next exchange a bit late. Van 2 ended up sending out another runner to start the leg until I got there, but he only ended up running about 200 yards before I caught him. The third leg can be described in just a couple of exclamations: Distress! Fatigue! Perspiration! Oh, how my legs ached. It was only 60 degrees, but it felt like the sun had done that thing with a magnifying glass that boys do to ants, and was directing the beam right at my head. So hot! I kept the phrase in my head, "The harder you run, the sooner you're done," and I kept running at a slow shuffle through the 4.9 miles from Oakley to Kamas, at a slight uphill the whole way. Highlight of the leg: passing, no, killing three runners that had started out at the same time as me, runners who had left me in the freaking dust at the starting line, whose tanks were now dry, and who had stopped running and started the Death March to the end of the leg. The absolute highlight was leapfrogging one girl (numbered among the aforementioned three kills) who had passed me about a mile into the leg, about half a mile after that. I didn't dare look back through the whole remainder of the run, but when I got to the finish line and finally turned around, she was nowhere in sight. People tell me that I'm not a competitive person by nature, but I find great satisfaction in little moments like that in a race, especially under difficult circumstances like the third leg of a relay. The mean-spirited-ness lasts for about 5 seconds, and then I mentally wish them well, though. Or do I?

It's hard to tell exactly what my pace was for the third leg because of the snafu at the beginning, but it was timed (and it felt like) about a 10:00 pace, which is the slowest that I've ever been clocked at a race, but I didn't care and I still don't. The Wasatch Back is hard, folks. Very hard, indeed.

Case in point - our van's strongest runner, Ryan, was out on his third leg - a grueling, 7.7-mile climb just outside of Heber, and the rest of us were at the next exchange waiting for him. We waited and waited, and his estimated finish time came and went, and then we waited some more. None of us were particularly worried, but more just curious as to what may have happened. His wife, Emily (the next runner), and a couple of other teammates were standing at the exchange when all of a sudden, a race official walks up to them, holding a pale and disoriented Ryan by the arm, and says something like, "here you go - your next runner can go ahead and start." The dude had passed out there on the road. Or so we conjecture. He can't remember. He remembers running and feeling a little faint, and then all of a sudden he was sitting on the rear bumper of our team vehicle. We think what happened was, he was nearing the end and started to wobble, when someone else, either another runner or a race official, saw him and grabbed him before he fell and led him in to the exchange. After a lot of liquids, a few hours' sitting and some salty food, he was feeling better, but he told me that he has actually never run the WB without something similar happening. Last year, after running the same leg, he got out of the car after the van's shift and retched his shoes out onto the schoolyard parking lot blacktop for about half an hour.

After a trip to Wendy's and a few restful hours later back at the suite, we drove down to the finish line and crossed with our other teammates. Total time: approx. 29 hours. Hooray! Finish line highlight: the announcer, moments before we crossed the line and apparently fumbling through paperwork, failed both to recognize our finishing time and to correctly pronounce our team name. "And....the Chow Mamas!" was all he could manage. Way to go, guy.

Summary

Definitely worthwhile. Ragnar does a great job with their races and I look forward both to the WB next year (either as a Cho Mama or under some other moniker) and to any other ones that I can line up. Perhaps SoCal or Napa Valley? How 'bout both?

Prologue

I did absolutely no exercise until Wednesday of the week following the race, at which point the panic began to set in that I was losing muscle mass at an alarming rate, and that I would still be required to swim a mile in open water in what now seems like a very short time. I went for a swim at the gym pool on Wednesday, and did a full mile at a slow but steady pace and felt pretty confident that perhaps I had licked my disease and could now re-enter my training program. Until, that is, I got out of the pool and coughed violently all the way out of the gym, through the parking lot and all the drive home and into the shower. Doh! As a result, this week I'm giving my lungs a rest and sticking to the weight room. To be continued...

End Transmission

Kau WelaKau What-a?

Kau Wela
Kau What-a?

During my active years as a cellist in high school, when I was performing and competing fairly regularly, my teacher would use an interesting phrase to describe me: though I never won anything, or even got called back to the second round, I had become a "very seasoned performer."

I never really knew what that meant, or how I should have taken it, until after my "performance" last Saturday at the Kau Wela beginner's triathlon. It was a nice event - very small, both in distance and in crowd size, nice swag, pretty course, a good choice for a guy going out for his first open water swim.

Or so you would think.

After a brief session with my trainer on Thursday afternoon, I was feeling pretty confident on Saturday morning that I would be able to turn in a decent time or maybe, if all the cards fell in my favor, win my age group. I had slept very poorly the night before, however, due to a nagging cough that I've now been fighting for about a month, and to having to care for my poor sick little kids. At any rate, I got to the site early, got my transition set up in a way that I like, put on my rental wetsuit, and began to wander down toward the water, where I decided to dive in and put in a few strokes just to get the butterflies out and see how I could expect my wetsuit to feel, as it was my first time in one of those, as well.

I swam out, and my confidence rose considerably - boy, was I floating! This would be a cinch! The little buoy that we had to go out and around seemed so close I could nearly touch it from the shore.

About 50 yards out, I stopped and floated for a bit, looking back at the shore and feeling great - when I remembered what someone had told me about a wetsuit: that it's sometimes good to let in some water through the neck hole in order to keep you warm during the swim. So there, 50 yards from the shore, I reached up for my collar, pulled it open with both hands, and let in a flood of late spring glacier runoff into my suit which, until that moment, I had been perfectly warm in.

It felt like the Grim Reaper himself was wrapping his icy arms around my chest in the most unwelcoming of embraces. In a second, I turned from a confident, well-trained athlete into a shivering wreck, 50 yards from shore, whose ability to float was dwindling, right along side his ability to swim any distance longer than 25 meters. My wetsuit turned from the best flotation device ever invented into a vicious water predator that was determined to squeeze me to death and drag me to the miry bottom. In an instant I was shot. I couldn't get any air. I dog-paddled back in to the boat ramp, crawled back on land and instantly began to envision my impending doom - the most embarrassing water death in the shortest possible triathlon distance. I wasn't going to make it to the end of the dock, let alone around the buoy that now looked as though it may have well been on the other side of the lake. My cough started back up; I forgot to put on my watch to check my splits; it was all going down the drain. Before I knew it, the call of "ready, go!" came from the guy with the bull horn, and I surrendered myself to destruction.

I won't give you all the gory details, but let's just say that my 11-minute swim involved a surprising amount of passing other swimmers (which is much less fun than any other kind of passing in a triathlon, I've found), some back-stroking, a little help from a life-vest on a string (with a guy on a boat at the other end), and a LOT of heavy breathing.

If there's one lesson from the Kau Wela, it's this: put in some time in a wetsuit and in open water well before race day. If it's your first time for both, or either, you're in for a few surprises.

After the swim, I dragged myself to my transition and mentally tried to put myself together to at least have a good second leg. As is my custom, I shot out of T1 like a bullet from a gun, and instantly regained my confidence. By golly, the best swim time could only be a couple of minutes better than mine, maybe I could catch them on the bike.

But then fate caught me again, this time in the form of...wait for it...GEAR SLIPPAGE! On the first of two steep climbs, I stood up in the saddle and set my sights on the guy in the blue shirt just ahead of me, and just when I had flipped the setting to "kill," the all-too familiar grinding sound coming from my rear cassette sent chills down my spine. Sure enough, there were two loud pops and in a moment I was riding through clay. I shifted back down, and the bike popped back into my middle cog. In the end, it got bad enough that I ended the climb sittind down, holding my rear shifter down with my right hand, steering wobbily towards the crest of the hill with my left, and watching Blue Shirt slowly slide away.

I got to the top of the course, turned it around, and moved up to my large chain ring to try and make up some time. Sadly, Blue Shirt was gone by then, but it sure was a lot of fun coming down that course back toward the transition area. I started out watching my speedometer, but stopped after I saw a 4 in the 10's place and figured I'd be better served watching where I was going.

I screamed back into Transition, threw on my running shoes and headed back out for a quick run. Last leg was tiring, but uneventful. And I never did catch Blue Shirt, unfortunately.

All in all, I finished in 8th place (of 45 starters) overall, 3rd in my age group (out of 6). Looking just at my splits, I turned in the 4th fastest time on the bike and the 3rd fastest time on the run. Not bad, but certainly not what I feel I was capable of doing. The moral of the story: I've been near religious about my training, and my pace in all three disciplines has been going steadily down for some weeks. However, pace and strength do not equal experience - you could be the fastest you've ever been, but if you're not ready for the squeeze of a wetsuit on your lungs or for the challenges of the open water, or if you didn't check your equipment the night before for any technical issues, you're really loading the deck against yourself.

The most surprising thing that I took from Kau Wela is: I was probably a more solid cellist in high school than I thought I was at the time, and in labeling me as "seasoned," my teacher was trying to tell me so. There's nothing that can tie together the skills learned in practice like the seasoning of experience. This story may read like a failure, but I feel very positively about my race. Despite an abysmal swim time and an overall "I could have done better," I'm taking away more from the Kau Wela now in terms of seasoning and general know-how and experience than I could possibly have won in prizes had I turned in a personal best. I'm now looking for a way to do most of my swimming in open water. And I'm saving up for my own wetsuit, dang it.

Now, if only I could gain enough "seasoning" to avoid illness brought on by water-borne pathogens.

End Transmission.