Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Monterrey World Cup

Monterrey marked the first race of the year. After a consistent winter of being pushed to another level of training I was foaming at the mouth to hear the horn.

I've learned a lot in the last 3 months. More than I thought I could. So when it came time to devise a race plan with Phil, I sat down and made it clear to myself what I needed to do to race well.

24hrs out of the race I began to execute this plan and stuck to it. Here is how it went.

For Mexican standards this race was cold. Water at 22c, air 20-25c with a cool wind made it important to stay warm at the start. I warmed up with a borrowed wetsuit, thx McCharles, and kept it on right up until they began calling us onto the pontoon.

The swim for this race was the area I had concern over. I had not been hitting the usual paces I tap out for 10days leading into this race.
All that changed though when I dove in and found myself on the hip of the leader. I then had a section where I struggled a bit and the mob was soon all over me. From there on I just had to focus on limiting the blows and contact in an effort to conserve yet still maintain contact with the group.

Have a look these swim videos to get the picture 1 and 2

Out of the water in usual fine fashion, AMac had seriously stung things out on the back half of the swim. A lead group of 8 or so joined andrew at the front. I found myself settled into the main pack of 25 I'd say. It included some heavy hitters on the bike(graves ,colucci, chrabot, butterfield) which had the pace cranked for 10k. I felt strong but still never got near the front until things settled a bit. The gap between the two groups shrunk to 30-40s and then stayed there throughout the 40k.

One engrained memory I have of the race was anticipating 4 or 5 water bottles to pop out as we rode over a large speed bump. I smiled as my $3 MEC holders did their job.

An error I made was coming into t2. I was too content and entered in near the back. This may have cost me up to 3 positions as I now look at the results.

In previous races I would sometimes dread the run. On this day though I looked at the run as my time to showcase the hard work put in and all the advice and support on running I received in the last while from all sources.

Focusing on maintaining contact with the group we set out for a fast first k. From 2-6k I felt very fluid and strong working my way up to 8th. The last lap I faded and couldn't match butterfield and a few others who came by.

Crossing for 11th I was elated and proud to have been able to express how if you stick to a process your goals can come to fruition.

Thank you Phil, my teammates, Noa, Jairus, Gibson, Dr. Guan, and my friends and family.

Next up: More hard work and the Vancouver Sun Run for a real good rip at 10k.

7 comments:

LARRY BRADLEY said...

Excellent race Andrew! Only a minute back of top spot and right on pace during the bike and run. Very good start to the season!

Best of luck in 2010.
Larry Bradley

BTW - what happened to AMac? Super fast as always in the water with a solid enough bike to be top 10...

Mark said...

Congrats Andrew!

Leif Baradoy said...

Great job Andrew. Thanks for the update. It's inspiring to see hard work paying dividends.
Keep it up.

Anonymous said...

well done andrew. I'm enjoying reading all these wonderful race reports :)

Noa said...

Answer to your random physiological question: No optimal, typical is around 12% for male swimmers, around 20% for female swimmers.

:)

Noa

Tyler Duncan said...

Great Job Andrew, good to see your season is off to such a fantastic start!

Wolfman said...

Simply awesome Loaf. Great to see all the hard work and sticktoittiveness paying off!