Lifetime Fitness Indoor Triathlon

Sunday, March 8, 2009
Lifetime Fitness - Eagan, MN

I've been putting off the blog, so checking in with a race report.

I went into this race to use it as a training day, and to see where I'm at with my level of fitness. The difference with this triathlon to the common triathlon, is that it is time-based, rather than distance-based. A "normal" tri consists of a person swimming, biking and running certain lengths, and then ranking that person against other competitors based on the time it took them to complete those distances.

This tri consists of a set time for each leg (10-minute swim, 30-minute bike, 20-minute run), then ranking the results based on the distance traveled. What's nice about it is, you know exactly when you're going to be done. The bad part is, that using indoor equipment (spin bike and treadmill) can create variables that may skew the results, primarily on the bike.

Knowing this, I do take the results with a grain of salt, but I still feel that I'm meeting my fitness goals rather nicely.

On with the report:

3:30 AM - Still awake at a couples' baby shower in Eagan. This was definitely not the plan, but it turned out that the shower-turned-party was a lot more fun than expected, so I decided to just go with it.

We went to a bar in Savage earlier in the evening that had a live cover band. I had a bacon cheeseburger and fries at about 9:00 PM, and drank two beers, two captain cokes and one jag bomb. There was a very loud cover band playing, and they were really fun, so I didn't feel like going home early for bed. I didn't get drunk, by any means, but I definitely was not sober when we left the bar.

We went back to the hosts' house in Eagan, and opened up the taco bar leftovers. A few of us turned on some Wii Sports, until we discovered the ping-pong table downstairs.

After a double's double-elimination tournament, and then a single's tournament, all with just the guys on teams as most of the girls went to bed, I decided that it was probably a good idea to get home to get the bar smell off of me, get some water, and maybe a short nap before my planned arrival time of 7:00 AM.

5:45 AM - Arrive in the garage, head upstairs and pack the tri bag, set two alarms and take a short nap.

6:10 AM - Get a text from my bro-in-law (BIL) saying that our time has been pushed back until 8:50. Short response text saying I'll be there at 8:30. Reset alarms. Back to sleep.

8:30 AM - Arrive at LTF, sign in, change into swim wear and sweatpants, and head to the sauna to warm up and stretch while watching the wave of swimmers already in progress in the pool.

They arranged the start times by waves. The pool in Eagan has 5 narrow lanes, and they put 2 swimmers to a lane, so each wave can have 10 swimmers. They had 1 volunteer per lane counting pool lengths swam for the swimmers. Everyone received a nice swim cap for the race too. I got a blue one.

9:45 AM - Head out onto the pool deck and struggle to get the swim cap on over dry hair. I don't normally swim with caps, but triathlons require them, so c'est la vie. Actually, after this race, I've decided to start using them more often to get the hang of them. They actually do help a little too...at least through placebo effect, making you think you look like you know what you're doing.

9:47 AM - Jump in and do two warm up laps. Goggles fill with water twice, but I figure I'm just a little jittery and don't think twice about it.

9:50 AM - Whistle starts our wave. I push off the wall and my goggles immediately fill with water again. I realize that my swim cap is pulled down too low on my brow, causing my eyebrows to squish down and mess with the seal on my goggles. I didn't dare take of the cap all the way, knowing the trouble that would ensue in trying to get it back on, so I decide to just flip the front of it up an inch or so. Push off the wall again and all is well.

10:00 AM - Whistle blows. 19 pool lengths. I was gunning for at least 16, which I did in my own 10-minute test earlier in the week. I lost count, so it felt good to hear I beat my goal!

10:10 AM - They gave everyone set transition times to avoid running around the club. Ten minutes for transition 1 (T1), so I changed out of my jammers and into some tri/bike shorts and shirt and headed upstairs to the spin studio. Because the bike wave is 30 minutes, the wave before us were still spinning. They had two rows of spin bikes facing each other, so we were able to use the empty row. I get the bike all adjusted and clip in for a quick warm up to get the legs ready before the transition time was up.

The part I was concerned about going into the day, was how they were going to measure distance traveled on the spin bikes, as they don't have computers or odometers on them. Also, they resistance on them is manually changed, allowing for variation between bikes.

The answer to the first question was pretty obvious: they mounted simple bike computers onto the bikes, with the sensor measured equally on the spin wheel.

But for the second question, apparently the spin instructors came in beforehand and each took turns on each of the bikes judging and adjusting each of them to "feel the same" all the way down the line, then they just taped the knob so it couldn't be moved. We had no choice but to accept their judgment.

Now, my biggest goal was the bike portion, as that's what I've been training the hardest and most for since last fall. I wanted to do my best, even if the results were a little skewed, just to see my name towards the top of the standings.

The whistle blows right on time. The spin instructors take turns on some other bikes while on the mic and basically guide us through a miniature spin class. They made it very fun actually, cheering us all on, and throwing in some interval spins just to make us push ourselves harder. The resistance wasn't set at a very high level, relatively speaking, so it really came down to who could spin the fastest for the longest period of time. Time went very fast, and before I knew it, the whistle was blowing.

I was gassed. I really pushed myself hard, and had to sit for a minute to let the blood circulate back to my head. I unclipped and headed out to the treadmill.

10:55 AM - The whistle blows to start the run. They had volunteers wandering around helping people get set up and making sure we all kept our feet on the belt at all times. We could set the speed and incline however we wanted, but couldn't step off the belt unless we hit pause and stopped recording distance. I got up and running pretty quickly and held an 8:30 pace for the first few minutes, then slowly increased the speed throughout the rest. I felt very loose considering the bike portion, so with about 8 minutes left I upped the pace to about 7:10 and went for it.

I don't normally check heart rate, but my next big investment will be a decent heart rate monitor to help with training. But as I was running on the treadmill, I took one or too grabs on the handle bars to check the heart rate, just out of curiosity. The max I found was 184 with about 3 minutes left in the run. A little higher than I was expecting, but kind of fun to find it.

The whistle blows, and I end with 2.63 miles. Averages out to just under an 8:00 pace, which also beat my goal of 8:00 or better.

As I walked away, I realized that I didn't drink any water except while biking, and I definitely felt it. Probably should have taken at least 3 or 4 swigs while running. Good notes for next time.

The results took a few days to come out, but I ended up 5th out of 60 total participants. Much better than I was expecting, but deep down that's about where I wanted to finish.

Here's the rest:

Overall: 5/60
Men's Division: 4/23
Men's Open Division: 3/14

Breakdown by leg in the Men's Division:

Swim: 4/23 (19 pool lengths; 25 meter lengths)
Bike: 1/23 (15.6 "miles")
Run: 4/23 (2.63 miles)

That's right. I won my first bike race!!

Turns out, I "rode" 15.6 miles in 30 minutes; 0.4 miles farther than anyone else. Mathmatically, that turns into 31.2 miles per hour, which I highly doubt I could hold on a road bike outdoors for 30 minutes. But, it felt really good to blow that goal out of the water this early in the season.

All in all, it was a really great time, and most importantly, a very well-organized race. All the volunteers and LTF personnel were very friendly and helpful, and made great cheerleaders.

The bike race season officially starts on my calendar next Tuesday, so I'll have much more regular entries starting soon.

Let the endorphin flow kick into high gear!