10/ 2010 Austin 70.3 Blake B

Good morning, everyone!

Now that I have the benefit of a week of hindsight on the Austin race, I think
it's time to get some thoughts written down to tell y'all the story.

What a fantastic race! Very, very well-organized, in a distinctively different
style from anything I've seen in the Northwest. It was really fun to see how
they do things down South. It was also a different model for transition than
I've used before, as there were two separate transition areas, which was new and
amusing for me. Also, if you're looking for a race to PR in, this is a great
choice - it's really, really, REALLY fast.

The swim in Dekker Lake is very nice, but a little bit crowded. Swim out and
swim in areas are very small, so they start in waves of roughly 150 or so
swimmers at a time. I was in 40-44 men last names starting with A-H, just to
give you an idea how finely broken up this thing was. Which, I should mention,
was wave 16 out of a total of 17. Which started roughly 90 minutes after the
pros, somewhere between 8:45 and 9:00. Not that I'm bitter or anything :).
Nikki started in wave 6, so about an hour ahead of me, which was kinda fun,
actually, because I got to think about chasing her around the course all day.
The water is WARM, but we were still wetsuit legal at 72.4 degrees.

T1 was interesting, though not necessarily in a good way. The soil in that
area, as the race organizer explained to us when talking about road conditions,
is mostly clay. When it gets wet, as it does after, say, 15 waves of swimmers
come out of the water (did I mention that they started me in the next to last
wave?), it looks just like you're walking on materials for a pottery class -
very, very firm, impressively sticky, and very, very dark, almost black. If
you're going to run this race, the most important thing you can bring with you
is cleat covers, because after you've gone about 5 steps in this stuff, you'll
need a pick like for a horseshoe or something to get it all out of your cleat so
you can clip in. Nikki didn't really have to deal with any of the wetness
(hello, wave 16 over here!), but by the time I exited T1 I had to take a couple
of minutes to even sort of get clipped into my pedals. It took really about a
mile and a half to get my right pedal in securely, and the left wasn't totally
in like it should be for almost 10 miles(!).

A few words about the bike course: flat flat FLAT! It's a single loop, which by
the way is AWESOME! And the elevation profile, according to mapmyride.com, goes
from 410ft to 656ft. That's right, folks, a whopping 246ft of elevation gain on
the entire ride. Check out the profile at
http://www.mapmyride.com/route/us/texas/austin/121127499439158476. For
comparison, Lake Stevens has approximately 4x the elevation gain, and the
longest climb is approximately 3x as long as Austin:
http://www.mapmyride.com/ride/united-states/wa/lake-stevens/614128205957962986.
We kept running into people who were local, or from places like, say, Kansas,
who would tell us "Oh no, this is Texas hill country, we hear the course is
totally hilly, it's not a piece of cake, so be prepared". These people will NOT
be racing Lake Stevens any time soon :).

I mentioned the road conditions a little while ago, and I should really give you
some detail on that. According to the race official, the soil underneath the
roads tends to shift and break down, so you get these big cracks and crumbling
on all the rural roads around there, and trust me, this bike course is rural!
When we drove the bike course the day before the race, we were both a little bit
freaked out by the condition of the roads, because they're all kinda rough,
bouncy, and all patchy-looking. It turns out not to be too much of an issue,
actually, because at bike speeds it's a very different experience. Still, I saw
four racers on mountain bikes during my ride, and it didn't seem like such an
awful idea by the time I was done.

T2 is very straightforward, and mercifully on asphalt instead of in a field
(mud, blech - wave 16, remember?)! T1, by the lake, is about a mile away from
the Expo Center (T2), where you finish both the bike and the run. This is where
everyone sets up their tents outside and gathers to spectate. The run course, I
thought, was a lot of fun, but it is decidedly NOT flat. It's a double-loop
course, and the loop is about half on pavement and half on trails next to the
lake. Basically you run back out towards T1, up down and around on the trails,
then back onto the road and up to the Expo Center, twice. Almost all of it is
either uphill or downhill, with only a short spot along the paved part of the
lake trail that's flat. On the bright side, there are way, WAY more aid
stations than at the Lake Stevens run course - one per mile, as it turns out.
All were very well-stocked with sponges, ice, water, gatorade, gels, and Coke.
Halloween appears to be a much bigger thing in TX than it is here, BTW, and lots
(if not most) of the people at the aid stations were in costume, which was fun.
One guy in a penguin costume was offering to do pushups if you let him squirt
you with a water pistol - he had a lot of takers :). There was also a live band
playing near one aid station, which was a lot of fun. By any measure, this race
is a great party!

I loved the finish of this race! The expo center has two buildings, an
exhibition pavilion where they have the Ironman village before the race, and a
rodeo arena with a few thousand seats. At the end of the second loop, you run
INTO the arena to the finish, with a ton of people in the stands, etc. It's
very cool.

So, how'd I do? For me, the day was really uneventful, and that was a good
thing. I PR'ed by roughly 20 minutes, finishing 6:29:37, here are my times:

Div. | Swim Place | Swim Time | T1 | Bike Place | Bike Time | T2 | Run Place
| Run Time
-----+------------+-----------+------+------------+-----------+------+----------\
-+---------
191 | 213 | 0:44:50 | 7:34 | 201 | 3:08:06 | 4:35 | 166
| 2:24:32

I'm very pleased with this, actually. My improvement over Lake Stevens was
good, and I felt good after the race, which was a nice change of pace :). 6
hours remains elusive, but I am determined to go under 6 next season(!), and
where I need to do my work in the off-season seems pretty clear.

Blake