ON-ON (to Kona!): Year of the Masters Mowhawk

Welcome to 2014! It's only the first week of February but I already have most of my 2014 season mapped out and locked in - IM 70.3 Raleigh and Ironman Chattanooga set the structure and everything else serves a purpose in between now and then. Many of the events I'm doing are fairly typical for me - Cary Long Course Du, Mountains of Misery, Kinetic 1/2. I've got a couple of other cycling events mixed in - Blood Sweat and Gears and Jamestown Gran Fondo, and I'll for sure be making a couple of weekend trips out to ride my favorite Skyline Drive in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

So with that taken care of I logged a very early season race to kick off 2014. I typically take some time off through the holidays and definitely forget where the pool is for a few months but this year a group of us from VA Beach decided to invade Key West for the Bone Island Triathlon, so that kept me mostly motivated to maintain at least some consistent level of training. I've only been swimming 1-2X per week for ~2k each and been loosely following a high intensity off-season plan (primarily tempo and threshold work) with some modifications to get a long run and ride in when the weather cooperates.

By all accounts the swim was a good 200m long at least but we all swam the same distance so it's not a big deal. The bike was flat and relatively fast, if not very interesting. I rode fairly strong and felt good coming into T2. I've basically held my FTP exactly where it was when I peaked for B2B back in Oct and rode the same power for this race so I'll come into the spring without any drop in my bike fitness. Even though I've had some decent run training I just wasn't feeling it and lost all motivation after the first loop. I wasn't expecting to crush the run but I had hoped for something in the 1:30-1:32 range off of a solid bike. The temps got into the upper 70s but it felt hot. A respectable race overall but nothing to blow my socks off.

S: 36:xx
B: 2:18:38, IF - .87, DATA
R: 1:34ish - Garmin missed the first 2-3min, DATA

This race also apparently marked my arrival in the "old" category - surprise to me. Based on USAT rules your age group is determined by how old you will be on Dec 31 of that year. So even though I'm still 39, I'll be 40 in September so this year I race in the M40-44. I was 5th overall at Bone Island and expected to get the M40-44 first place award...until I heard my name called for the Male Masters Champion. Can you believe that shit? I didn't realize it but Masters division is 40+ so I snuck in and cherry picked an award from the old guys. Personally, I would have rather they had top 5 overall podium instead of top 3 but this was a relatively small race so I understand. Doesn't change how I races and it was kind of cool to enter a new phase of my tri career still feeling like I'm in the hunt for overall podiums.

I won't go into detail on a race report and review but in general I have to say that I'm disappointed with the quality and management of this event. It's definitely not what I have come to expect fro SetUp Events. If you are interested I posted some comments on a thread over on Slowtwitch. We had fun regardless and it was great to have a group of friends all racing together and supporting each other. All in all it was a nice break from the frigid weather we've been having in VA recently and has kept me honest with some training through the holidays. That should pay dividends coming into the spring and hopefully help me show up in Chattanooga a step above where I would otherwise be - On-On to Kona?


Old guys wave start - I'm 4th from the far right going counter-clockwise - in the black wetsuit and white cap :)


Party Koozie was on hand along with the Final Kick Sports crew to lend support to the racers.

A final note on the race - my wife kicked ass riding the bike leg as part of Team 757 Chicks. This was her longest bike ride ever and she cruised right through although she did learn a valuable cycling lesson - Chamois Butt'r is your friend on long rides :)

Team 757 Chicks celebrates their accomplishment!

Of course the race was mostly a cover for all of us to travel down to Key West and celebrate Paul McGraw's birthday in style with the first (annual?) Paul McGraw Birthday Pub Crawl. I won't even try to recount how many drinking establishments we frequented that day but I'll leave you with a bit of photographic documentation.