Winter was short this year but as it turns out, that was all good for training. Contrary to popular belief, it does usually rain in Northern California, but not so this year. Little rain, means little snow, which meant many more days dedicated to swim, bike, run, than the draw of snowboarding. I actually mountain biked in Tahoe in the middle of January – I doubt that will ever happen again. It was a little chilly but there was no snow on the ground, making for great riding.

I was convinced to sign up for Ironman 70.3 Oceanside which is early in the season. My main motivation, other than trying something new, was to make sure I trained well over the winter. Having a 70.3, the longest distance I’ve ever raced to date, looming in March definitely kept me focused and I put in some pretty solid training hours leading up to it. Most of the training was on the road or on the trainer but the plan was to give me a solid endurance base before hitting the trails for Xterra season. Early signs are good; I ran Kaiser Half Marathon in San Francisco in early February, logging a PR of 1:41:12, 5 minutes faster than my previous best. I also raced Stanford Treeathlon in February, a local sprint tri, winning my age group and being 20seconds off running down the overall win.

I am lucky to be part of the Inov-8 team this year: http://team.inov-8.us/2012/01/team-inov-8-2012-sian-turner.html – it seems I am in the company of some world class ultra and trail runners so I have some work to do to represent Inov-8 in the Xterra world! The shoes are amazing and as I run some more miles in them, I will be forming my opinions on when and who should be running in these shoes on both trail and road.

Oceanside 70.3 report to follow…

Going into this race I was pretty relaxed, maybe too much so to really race hard, but this actually turned out to be a pretty good state of mind to be in.  I’d had a cold in the weeks leading up to the race so I’d pretty much shut it down in terms of training which meant I was rested coming in but not particularly sharp.

It was a brand new course this year and we were able to pre-ride and run to our hearts content.  I pre-rode as easy as I could 2 days before the race, mainly to make sure my bike was in working order; I was riding a brand new frame and brakes that Trailhead had fixed up for me under warranty (got to love specialized lifetime frame warranty!) ready for Maui.  The bike felt great and the new course was the right mix of bike handling, steep power climbing, super fast descending and fun.

Race day was the hottest day of our whole week long stay in Maui; as the sun rose there was not a cloud to be seen and not even the faintest breeze – riding down to set up transition we could tell it was going to be a day where heat management was going to be a big factor in the race.  I set up transition, got body marked and chatted to whoever wanted to chat, still feeling very relaxed and just looking forward to a fun race.

A few days before the race there were some predictions that the waves on DT Fleming beach could be anything up to 6ft or more but it turned out to be pretty calm.  It was a mass start of something like 675 athletes and I wasn’t about to expend energy fighting with any arms and legs – the congestion around the first buoy was epic and I chose to swim some extra yards to avoid as much of it as I could.  For me, the swim went well; I was comfortable and on the quicker side for me and I even managed to play around with drafting some feet for a lot of the  swim.  The run from the ocean to T1 was lined with people cheering so it was hard not to smile and enjoy it.

I transitioned smoothly with a plan to take the beginning of the bike steady as I knew the last 5 or 6 miles were just as tough as the beginning and biking to hard at the start would make for a miserable end of the bike and make the run just a huge sufferfest!

I dropped my chain early on in the race but it took seconds to put it back on, then the first few miles were on twisty loose singletrack where there was just a long line of people filing through, some riding, some making mistakes so having to dismount, causing several behind to also have to dismount.  There were some very frustrated shouts coming from various people but in  my super relaxed state of mind I decided it wasn’t worth getting stressed over and just worked my way through until the trail opened up; we’d still only been riding for about 15minutes at this point so there was plenty of time left to make up any time lost.  Early on in the bike I knew the heat was pretty bad so I concentrated on drinking as often as I could, eating my GUs and emptying a bottle of water over my head at both the aid stations.  Despite that I was being very cautious about pushing too hard; I was pretty sure I wasn’t fighting for the top age groups spots – if I was I would have laid my conservatism aside and prepared myself to end the day in the medical tent.  Playing the first part of the bike steady paid off at the end, on the last climbs I was feeling strong and pushing past people who were looking very unhappy.  I just dipped under the 2hour mark for the bike which on my pre-ride I had thought was going to be a pretty solid time so I entered T2 pretty happy with myself and still smiling.

I didn’t know what to expect of the run but I knew I had managed my bike well enough to give myself a shot at a good run.  It started uphill and pretty much never stopped until the 4mile mark; there were a couple of breaks but only followed by even steeper climbs.  My legs were feeling pretty good but I was feeling the burning sun quite a lot so played the conservative card again.  There was an aid station every mile so I took advantage of all the water and ice I could and got a few minutes of running at a decent temperature but it didn’t last long!  I did like the run course – it’s definitely worthy of a world championship course; I just was not prepared for the heat – something I am going to plan for better next year as it definitely slowed me down so I wasn’t able to take advantage of the fitness in my legs.  I passed up a couple of girls at the end of the run on a gnarly river bed crossing and a short stretch along the beach.  My dad was waiting on the beach for me and ran with me along it – this was a pretty cool ending to my race.  The last 200yards to the line was a very mean grassy uphill through the Ritz Carlton grounds – it was lined with people cheering so there was no way I was going to stop running!  My legs were feeling ok still really, I just couldn’t wait to return to a normal body temperature.

I finished 11th in my age group very pleased with how I managed my race; not as fast as I would have been were it a little cooler and cloudier (probably could have finished 6th or 7th if I’d pushed through and ignored the heat) but I avoided heat exhaustion and dehydration and was very soon ready for celebrating with cocktails rather than IV fluids!

I loved having all my family there with me and several new friends I’ve made through Xterra this year – I’m looking forward to some good training sessions with some of you over the winter, then seeing everyone again at the races next season.

There is a short highlight video of the race here: http://youtu.be/0ZcZrlx_Rhk

And for those that are interested, here is my bike split on Strava:

http://app.strava.com/rides/2102484

My main aim for this race this year was to do my training and my fitness justice and enjoy it; last year I had a bad race and on top of that did not have fun either.  We’d been able to drive out with the dogs the Monday before the race so I’d have plenty of time to settle in, check out the course and spend a week at altitude.

I pre-rode the course and was feeling really strong – I had no idea why I had not liked this race last year, the trails were great.  The second half of the bike course had been changed and it was a fantastic trail; the course climbs from the reservoir at about 4900ft to the top of snowbasin resort at around 7300ft so anyone without climbing legs was not going to have a lot of fun!  I’m a pretty good climber and like the challenge so was looking forward to it.  The downside of the course was that it was pretty smooth without much int he way of technical challenge so that would play into the advantage of those with pure power and fitness rather than technical mountain bike skills.  I prefer courses that present a few rocks or some nice slippery tree roots or something than means you need to know how to handle a mountain bike, but nevertheless I was really looking forward to seeing how my legs fared.  I had had a 2 week taper for the race for the first time ever and had been doing some consistent training up until that point so I really had no excuses!

Race morning was chilly but the sun soon came out and by the very civilised 9am start time it was warming up nicely.  I got both transitions set up and went to get body marked which took much longer than anticipated as Lance Armstrong (doing his first Xterra and first triathlon in 20 something years) and his entourage inserted themselves to the front of the line as I was waiting.  This extra 10 minutes left me with less time to warm up than I’d planned so I skipped the bike warm up and opted for a longer jog instead – this seemed to work out pretty well and I got back to put my wetsuit on feeling nice and warm and ready to go.  I was  surprisingly relaxed with an edge of excitement mixed in.

The swim start here is horrible and I knew that from last year and it hadn’t changed.  I’d opted for a sleeveless wetsuit as I’d been swimming in it all week and got quite comfortable; I actually get quite hot in long sleeves if the water is much above 60 and my shoulders have also got tired in my last couple of swims in sleeves well before they should so I thought I’d give it a go.  All age groupers go off in a mass start straight into the sun and it’s almost impossible to see the first buoy.  My strategy was to find feet to follow and hope they were going the right way; I think I started out very conservatively and at the back of everybody so took a while to get going and ended up having to sight myself to the first buoy which seemed to take forever to get to.  Once there, I turned around it and found some feet to follow to the second buoy and then most the way back to the start of the second lap; I think the feet I chose, whilst going the right direction were going probably slower than I could have used; at least I finished the first loop feeling like I’d used no energy at all.  Second loop you get to swim at the sun again – same story, sighting was horrible and it took more time and effort than it should have to get there, but I made it, then finished off the rest of the loop more than ready to hit the bike.  I wonder why we don’t swim the loop in the other direction to avoid swimming blind for 1/3 of the swim?  I’ve made swim progress this year but it hasn’t yet translated into a better time for a race; I’m getting very used to a 35minute swim spilt (this includes transition time in xterra, but still, it’s a ways from where I want to be; I’m waiting for the day where there is a 2 at the start of my swim split – I will be throwing a huge party when this day arrives!).

T1 went well, it was a longish run up a slippery boat ramp and along a roughly graded road lined with people.  We had to shove all of our kit into a numbered trash bag to be taken up to the finish for us so there was a little more work required in T1 than usual but it was the same for everyone.  Just as I was about 50yards out of T1 and on my bike I managed to get stung by a bee/wasp on my right ear – great!  Having never been stung before I had no idea how I would react so I just ignored it and kept on going – after a while it eventually went numb.  The bike starts with a little lap around a field and out onto the shoulder of the road for about a mile before hitting the trail.  Climbing up Wheeler Canyon is pretty steady going in terms of a MTB climb; a little rough and rocky but not too steep a grade so for once it was possible to meter the climb a little bit – with 14miles and 3400ft or so of climbing on the course, starting a little conservative seemed like a good idea.  I was feeling strong, gradually working my way past people and managing to get GU’s and fluid in as planned.  Somewhere at about 5miles of climbing you get a short respite of run fast downhill before resuming the climb; it’s a nice break and chance to take stock of how hard you feel you can attack the rest of the climb (still another 7 or 8 miles I guess).  I felt like I’d been climbing at the right pace so decided to keep doing what I was doing.  I tracked down some people that I knew I would only catch if I was having a good ride so that reinforced things for me.  The end of the climb was hard but in a good way – it makes you feel like you’ve earned the descent!  Going down was fast but not technical, although I saw a few people crash – I guess you need to know how to mountain bike on this trail after all!  I got followed down by a couple of guys, one of which complimented me on how I rode; I wonder if this was genuine or whether he was just surprised that a girl hadn’t crashed like so many others?

At the bottom of the descent there is about 10mins more pedaling before T2 at which point I caught a girl in my age group who had previously out-biked me; this gave me a bunch more confidence, especially as I thought I was feeling good enough to have a strong run.  My T2 is pretty quick and I was out and running before I had a chance to think about how my legs felt.  The first half mile out of T2 if the hardest part of the whole run course – it goes straight up a pretty steep fire road; last year I couldn’t even try to run it but this year I just put one foot in front of the other, didn’t push too hard and ran all the way up to the start of the singletrack – nice!  The running trail is more rocky and technical than the MTB so you have to watch your footing pretty carefully – I love this kind of running and my legs were moving really well so I took advantage of it; after the initial climb, the next 2-3 miles are windy narrow trail which rolls up and down.  I started passing people and was feeling good; I had a feeling I hadn’t taken in quite as many calories on the bike as I’d like so I’d grabbed a packet of GU chomps I’d left in transition and was munching on them as I went as well as taking 2 cups of water as each aid station without slowing down.  I didn’t really know how far ahead the others in my age group were but wanted to put down the best run that I could regardless.  The run went pretty quickly, but with a mile to go a girl with ’30′ on her calf trotted past me but didn’t get more than two steps in front; ha, no way was she getting past me in the last mile.  Most the last mile is downhill, steep, rocky and loose – this kind of running I’m pretty good at so at the last aid station I didn’t grab water but found a burst of speed that put me back past her and I thought gaining ground – I didn’t dare look back but kept moving downwards as fast as I could scaring a few people who were picking their way down way too carefully for my liking (and still falling!) as i squeezed by on one side or the other.  I ran scared and didn’t look back hoping that I’d put enough space between us, at the bottom of the hill we had to turn up a silly steep 50yards of fire road before heading downhill again to the finish – not fun but I ran it (not quite with a smile however!) then hit the downhill to the finish still feeling strong relative to how I’ve felt many times before, and I really had fun.

I finished 5th in my age group – the same postion as last year (I’d have been 2nd in the 25-29 AG this year) but lots faster and lots stronger and 14th amateur overall this year vs. 30 somethingth amateur last year (my AG is super fast right now!).  This years bike course was different than last year so it’s hard to compare times directly, but it was a similar length with similar elevation gain, just a bit smoother and faster trail and the first half of the course was the same.  Last year I biked 2:16, this year 1:57, the top 4 in my age group biked pro bike times around 10mins quicker than me.  My run was my biggest improvement; the run course was very similar but a bit longer this year; last year I ran just under 1 hour, this year 51minutes – over a 10km course I’m pretty happy with going nearly 9 minutes quicker on the back of a much stronger bike leg also.  The swim was nearly identical in terms of time, but I think I used less energy this year and didn’t hate it so I’m counting that as an improvement!

I loved having so much fun at this race and am itching to get back training already before tapering again for the world champs in Maui on October 23rd.