Race Report-Bayshore 70.4
by Manny Aragon
I am a big fan of local races. I have a family and have to pick my races carefully but I also like to race as much as I can and local races make it a whole lot easier. Don’t get me wrong, I like travel races just as much as the next guy but I would rather race a whole bunch of local races than one or two big travel races a year.
So I was excited when I found out last year about the Bayshore 70.4. Its in Belmont Shore and is only 20 min from my house. It’s a small, locally produced, race capped at 100 participants. Belmont Shore seems to have a pretty tight knit group of triathletes but they are a friendly group- I bought my bike at a local store and really liked the vibe of the whole scene.
After a great season opener at the Desert Tri last Sunday I felt really strong and Monday went to the Gym for my weight workout and for an afternoon threshold run. Tuesday morning I was feeling a bit off and although I never quite got sick, I was off all week. As such and knowing I had the Bayshore race coming up, I decided to focus on getting well rather than subjecting my body to training stress. So, I didn’t train all week.
Maybe that’s why I didn’t sleep all that well on Friday night and got an unusual case of the jitters on Saturday morning. Nonetheless, I was as ready as I was going to be and I headed out to the race.
Swim: 40:20 (for 1.3 mi/2288 yd)
This felt like a really slow swim for me- my garmin says I swam 26XX yards (an additional 300-400 yards!) I felt like I was sighting pretty well but the course was curved and, well, who knows? The water was really nice and smooth,…and cold. I don’t consider myself a fast swimmer so I usually am pretty conservative on the swim and in placement prior to the race start.
In this case I got caught in a group of slow, non straight swimming swimmers. It sucked! This race had only 80 participants so we had a mass start. In this future, I will sprint the first 2-300 yards of this course to get a better position. At bigger races, this is sort of futile as there are many, many better swimmers than I- but not at this one.
The course is two loops around the swim channel in Alamitos bay- from the start down to the 2nd street bridge and back 2x- exiting the water at the end of the first loop for a brief 20-30 yard run around a cone before you go back and do the 2nd loop. It’s a pretty easy course so I feel like I should have swum this one faster…
T1: 4:16
Upon reflection, while the toe sox do take maybe a minute to put on, the real thing slowing me down here is the fact that I simply struggle to get my wetsuit off of my feet. I spent a good 2 min just trying to get it off, frozen fingers fumbling with a two tight wetsuit stuck on my ankles. Still, I was faster than last weekend. Maybe its time for a different wetsuit…
Bike: no official time yet-but-according to garmin: 2:53:06 @ 205W Avg
Both water and air temp were in the 50s so I was pretty cold starting the bike in soaking wet tri gear. I figured I’d need to ride pretty hard to warm myself up in the beginning. The first 2 miles of the bike are on city streets with stop lights and traffic (an open course) until you get to the beginning of the San Gabriel River Trail bike path. The rest is on the SGRT bike path with one brief 100yard stint on the street as you cross over to the other side of the SGRT.
We had a head wind all the way out to the turn around at the 10 FWY. The bike path has some really narrow underpasses and there is some rough and uneven pavement but overall, It’s a pretty uninspiring grind. 28 miles out to the 10 FWY and back. I did enjoy seeing scenes of the underbelly of bucolic south LA County though. Who knew that Pico Rivera was so rural? I grew up in So Cal and never knew. Pretty cool…
I was anticipating a tail wind on the way back and for a brief period, I had one- watts down- speed up-but that didn’t last long. The last 18 miles had a pretty good headwind and I set myself to grinding it out.
The bike leg is usually where I do pretty well and certainly here I passed a huge number of people- making up for my slow swim and transition- but overall, I felt weak on the bike. My numbers ~80% of FTP were again a guesstimate of how hard I should ride this length of course to still feel fresh enough to run well but I felt like I overbiked.
One thing I’ve been struggling with is bike nutrition. I’ve been experimenting with many things on the bike but basically I don’t think Im getting enough calories/hydration on the bike. I intensely dislike gels and chews and prefer real food- BUT- and the big -BUT- is, I cant seem to find something that’s easy to handle that I can eat easily that doesn’t require lots of chewing. If there is any adversity on the bike course, which there always is, I never want to break pace to eat.
It almost seems as if eating on the bike takes more energy than it gives- which I know is not true- eating is pretty important on the course- but it’s a big problem for me on the bike course. A speedfil would help the drinking part- and I can get that easily but the eating…
Overall, I managed to eat 1.5 bonk breaker bars on the course and 1 hammer gel at the turnaround. About 500-520 cal total.
T2: Again no official time yet but garmin says 1:55. I took 30 sec here to eat another gel in T2.
Run: 1:48:31 (8:17/mi)
This was a slower run than I wanted and I felt tired after the bike but it was about 1min/mi slower than my January ½ Marathon PR of 1:35:xx. I’m not much of a runner but it seems to me that improving my bike strength will allow me to run faster off the bike. My goal for this year is to be running in the mid 7’s of the bike on a flat course.
The course is a two loop beach bike path run- open course style. Its an easy run, relatively speaking, with two small hills- one to get over the pier and the second, a roughly 100’ rise from the beach path up the bluff to the top. At the end of the first leg of the first lap, I ate another hammer gel, to top myself off for the rest of the run.
Ive found that I don’t like to eat much on the run but that 1-2 gels seems to give me just the amount of boost I need to keep myself in the pain zone.
Overall time: 5:26:13 a PR for me.
Overall impression: This was a fun race put on by a great group of folks- the race director remembered me personally from the registration process- even though we had otherwise not met. I liked that. The vibe was pretty mellow- lots of college age students and the seasoned tri crowd all mixing nicely. They served burgers at the end- I didn’t stay for that- family and all- but it looked fun. The swim course and run course were great albeit uninspiring. I didn’t enjoy the bike segment though. I may do this race again next year because its an early season warm up to gauge my performance by but not because of the course.
There were some execution problems here in the Swim, T1 and Bike that could make the difference between a 5:26:13 and a sub 5. Certainly bike training will only help but swimming straight will also get me closer. A couple of minutes on the swim, a couple in T1 and a few on the bike will get me a few on the run. Sub 5 is within reach.