Race Result

Racer:	Mike Guzek
Race:	Eagleman
Date:	Sunday, June 13, 2004
Location:	Cambridge, MD
Race Type:	Triathlon - Half Ironman
Age Group:	Male 25 - 29
Time:	4:33:07
Overall Place:	94 / 1050
Age Group Place:	1 / 34
Comment:	Great race conditions. I was pleased with my effort.

Race Report:

http://mguzek04.tripod.com/eagleman04.htm

If you have read my race reports lately then you know about some of my recent misfortune. It is because of that misfortune that I was not surprised to find myself sitting in the doctor’s office on Friday morning asking if I’d be able to race at Eagleman on Sunday. You see, this all started 3 days earlier when I met a female jogger on the trail wearing headphones… unfortunately, I met her on my bike….going 20 mph. She was at her run turn around point and blindly spun around to the opposite side of the trail unable to hear my cry of “left! left! left!” We collided and she went to the ground and I went over the top of my bike and landed on my shoulder. She was banged up, but able to walk back to where she lived. I was scratched and bruised with a stiff shoulder but was pretty much all right. However, at the pool Thursday morning I was unable to take a stroke without serious pain and in an instant my hopes of racing evaporated. The doctor’s visit didn’t yield much useful information. I injured my AC joint but they couldn’t really say whether I could (or should) compete. They recommended that I not compete but couldn’t really offer a good reason why, other than I complained that it hurt when I swam. I decided to do a final test Saturday morning and make a game time decision.

The Decision
I woke up Saturday and my shoulder was stiff… it felt so bad that I started to make some water bottles for a tentatively planned trip to Skyline. My plan was that if my test swim yielded the same results as a few days earlier, I was going to train like crazy on Saturday and go to be a spectator at the race on Sunday. I didn’t feel like there was any chance of my swim feeling good so I was already getting things ready for a training day. Just to be sure, I loaded up on ibuprofen and went to the pool anyway. Right away I noticed a pretty good improvement…I was actually able to swim, albeit with some pain, but I figured that adrenaline and a little grit might get me through the swim at the race. Excited, but with some reservations, I went home and started packing for Cambridge.

At The Race
After registration I headed to a pizza joint to meet up with the dawgs who were nice enough to wait up for me. It was:
Dan “The Hammer” Lader,
Brady “The Run Pummeler” Dehoust,
Howard “X” (short for X-factor) Curtis,
Marc Nesta The Bike Hammering Contesta, and
Me-- The Big Horse….Le Grand Cheval..

The next morning, I drove Brady and myself to the race which kicked off at 7:00 a.m., and since I started in wave 10 (8:09 p.m) I had plenty of time to hang around check things out. The late start also gave me an optimal timeslot to hit the Port-a-Loo. The Clydesdale rack this year was fantastic. We were situated where the pros have been in years past so we didn’t have to run out of our way to get to our transition spot. I spotted fellow clyde (and Rat) Bill setting up his machine in T-1. There is always one thought that pops in my head at the first glimpse of Bill…his bad ass Hummer. It’s such a sweet looking ride. I asked him how his it was and that brightened my day a bit.

Whilst setting up my transition area, I gobbled up the last of my planned dosage of ibuprofen. In the end I think it was 1200 milligrams. If any of you found my liver floating in the Choptank river, I’d be nice if you could return it. The doc told me to take 800…and well, I am clyde so everything in excess, right?? In the minutes leading up to the swim, my usual excitement for my strongest even was replaced by doubt and nervousness. I had visions of severe shoulder pain and a demoralizing swim. In my mind, I figured that it would slow me down a few minutes….anything more than that and I feared I would enter Demoralizedville…perhaps never to return. I just did not want to come out of the water in an unrecoverable funk.

The Swim
Typically, I come out very hard, but my plan today was to start off easy and work my way into a good stroke depending on how I felt. I seeded myself conservatively and when the gun went off I started nice and easy. With in the first few hundred yards I knew I made the right decision to race. The pain was minimal and I felt really smooth in the water. I tried to draft by swimming just off the left hip of another clyde but 3 times, either by current or my own recklessness, I crashed into this guy in a pretty big way. I decided to drop back and hop on his feet. I followed him to the boat turn around and decided to try to pick things up on the way back. By this point, there were swimmers everywhere and I adopted a method of sighting where I’d look up two strokes in a row—once to look for other swimmers and the second time to find buoys. My steering was just about as good as it could have been. Just as we began the swim back to shore, I noticed that the fellow I hammered earlier was now hanging on to MY feet, although he was kind enough not return the beating I gave him. As we approached the swim finish chute he tried to shoot around me. I picked up the pace trying to beat him to the exit for sheer sake of beating him to the exit. He had the same plans as we raced up the ramp. I lunged my foot forward and it crossed the timing mat a split second before he did. Hooray! Unfortunately, I lunged the non chipped ankle so I settled for a one second slower time than my swim buddy. Rats! (the other kind).

I exited in 29:01 and I was so excited to see that time. I had the chance to watch the earlier waves come in so I knew what a “fast” time was and my time far exceeded what I thought I could do on this day. This was a complete 180 from my feelings just before the swim and was a welcomed and unexpected boost.

In T-1 I got the wetsuit off with no problems and shoved a gel flask and some salt tabs/ibuprofen in my jersey. I sprinted and got rolling with no problems.

The Bike
I rested my vocal cords in the days leading up the Eagleman because starting in the second to last wave of the day, I knew there would be quite a few “on your lefts” and “passing” and I even a few “hey now, let’s not get too close to that guy’s wheel” just to keep ‘em honest out there. The course didn’t disappoint. I spent most of my time riding in the passing lane. My plan was to take whatever time I needed to warm up and then push a hard pace for about 15-20 minutes so I could get some idea of what “hard” felt like. Then, I would cruise until the halfway point at which point I would make a determination of how I felt and hopefully pick it up from there. My main goal was body maintenance. I have suffered back pain every year on this course and with the new aero position I was extremely concerned about back, shoulder and neck pain. Despite liberal stretch breaks, by around mile 20 my back started to ache and it never went away, although I was able to manage it by standing periodically to relieve pressure. In the end it was an issue, but probably not a factor in the race. I started the race with a 700 calorie Extran drink with a splash of protein power. I also carried a gel flask that went largely unused (replaced by Gatorade).

Around mile 10, I was minding my own business passing folks when he showed up…The Blue Streak. Some dude with a 46 on his calf donned in silver and blue came by me like he meant business. I stayed with him until about the halfway point, sitting about 30-50 yards back. At this point, I was going to show this fellow how the Clydes do it and I picked up the pace and moved around him and set my sights on other unsuspecting cyclists to catch in my web of cycling destruction. Before I could even get anything close to a respectable haul in my web, the Blue Streak came screaming by again with his own intentions to set things right. The only way to describe how I felt the rest of the bike ride is by reflecting on an episode of Wile E. Coyote (http://looneytunes.warnerbros.com/stars_of_the_show/wile_roadrunner/wile_story.html). Wile (I guess that’s his first name????) had finally managed to get his lasso around the neck of the Road Runner and for the briefest of moments his face lit up and he sensed he had done a good thing. But when the rope finally came taut, it was clear Mr. Coyote got way more than he bargained for. The coyote was dragged around corners at high speeds and flung wildly out of control around the road. In my efforts to stay with the Blue Streak an injection of lactic acid shot into my quads and Gatorade and gel found its way down the sides of my cheeks and chin from half-hearted attempts to eat and drink that were thwarted by acceleration after acceleration from my Road Runner. Things were very legal in that I was generally about 50 yards back the entire way. For Wile E. Coyote, things ended when he flew off a cliff and dropped waaaaaaay down to a ravine below. For me, things ended in T-2. When the beating stopped, I came in at 2:22:47 and the Blue Streak disappeared into the sea of bike racks. There would be no commercial break for me though…it was time to get my run on.

Run
T-2 was another good one and I slipped on my race belt and hat and took advantage of the good rack spot and got out in no time. Despite the pretty aggressive finish to the bike I felt good and the cloud cover kept things cool. Approaching the first mile marker, there he was again, The Blue Streak, only now he had added a blue cap. I inched passed him and we chatted briefly about the ride. He said something about how he would struggle on the run and that we wouldn’t see each other again, yadda, yadda, yaddda…I could see the look in his eye and the ripple in his calf and I didn’t believe him for a second. I pushed on and felt good and managed to run 7:15s most of the way out there. I passed X who was on his return trip looking really fresh. He told me before the race that he was going to be focused on the run and I shouldn’t expect any interaction with him. The fact there was eye contact and a head nod exchanged was a real race blessing. I saw Brady who shared the unfortunate news of his flat tyre and just a few minutes later Nesta. I would drink either water or Gatorade and occasionally I would take a little bit of gel. I hit the turn around still feeling good at exactly 47:30. If I could return equally as fast I would hit one of my goals of a 1:35 run. The other goal was to run a 7:30 pace. I treat my run goals like car warranties….for cars, it’s 3 years or 30,000 miles, whichever comes first. For my run goals it’s a 1:35 finish, a 7:30 pace, or finish without doing anything stupid…whichever comes first. I figure if I have enough goals, I am bound to hit one of them.

While I felt strong, I could feel myself starting to slow just a bit. About that time I saw Eric Sorensen on a bike yelling at someone behind. “Your pace is good. Hold it there and then open it up at the next turn.” Who was he talking to?? You guessed it: Beep! Beep! The Blue Streak came blowing buy and my lasso went out one last time. He spoke some encouraging words as we passed mile 9. Approaching the next aid station he barked at me “quick! quick! quick!” in an effort to keep me moving….I was dying, but he had lifted my pace and I wanted to stay with him as long as I could. In one 60 second stretch, I passed a ton of peeps that I knew coming from the other way, probably 6 or 7, each one of them saying “….come on guz” “….looking good bro” “….ride big horse ride!!” The Blue Streak said he felt like he was running with the Mayor! My breathing labored and I had a hard time figuring out my splits. I lifted my head up at one point and I notice we were just a few seconds short of “the turn.” I thought to myself “is this the turn where he is supposed to ‘open it up’?” Seconds later, I learned that it was in fact that turn. About 10 yards around the corner he accelerated and I told the Blue Streak that the line was breaking and wished him good luck. I slipped back slowly and my legs felt very heavy by mile 11. I kept moving at a pace that was probably….a little under 8 minute miles.

As I approached the final turn into the park I saw most of my crew that I had eaten dinner with and my girlfriend standing there to cheer me on (they were there cause they were from earlier waves, not because they pummeled me, mind you). Brady and Howard later mentioned that based on the way I (and later clydes) were coming around that last corner they are going to recommend that the Race Director clear the corner of any spectators and put up some hay bails because they didn’t think I was going to be able make the turn. Us big fellows don’t corner well…particularly not after 13 miles of running….spectate at your own risk. It was a little dicey, but I managed to get this big carcass around the corner. I finished in 4:33:07 with a 1:36:09 run averaging 7:25 miles. My time was over 9 minutes faster than last year.

Post Race
I was tired but felt really good after the race. I was fortunate enough to be the fastest clyde overall. This actually was more important to me than most times I have won a Clydesdale award because last year I got my ass kicked and finished 9th overall. There was some confusion around the Clydesdale awards but I think Bill was 2nd in the over 40 group and Lindsey was top Athena –WAHOO! I want to toss out a couple outstanding spots that stick out in my mind. Brady’s 1:22 run is pretty insane. Stv’s 2:15 bike split super solid (even if he thinks he’s got more in him) and once again Dan FrosteBoom turned in another all around butt kicking effort. Nesta also turned in the quickest effort to vacate the premises as I never saw him post race. Yost was also gracious enough to leave the Clydesdale racing to the REAL big boys and turned in a stellar 4:28. I want to give shout out to Brad Payne who I had the chance to meet and chat with and Steve who I met as well. The Candyman, Jeff Gura showing some glimpses of his candyself as well as Yarnoff, and Buddy who was one of the happiest looking runners I saw out there and finally to all the other people’s names who aren’t at my finger tips at this moment. Also, special shout out to Rich Haus for completing his first half IM. I have seen him sink, er float…I mean swim in the pool at Wakefield on many-a-morning so I was happy to see him get through the swim and the rest of race in outstanding form!

Two final quick takeaways I wanted to share. First, I was reminded of how fortunate we all are to be able to finish without any problems. After having had issues in my previous two races and nearly having one in this race, I experienced a “fresh buzz” at the finish that I had not felt in quite a while. And even more to that point, after Brady’s flat tire which set him back nearly 15 minutes, which is the type of issue I have dealt with lately, he got back on the bike and not only powered the remaining 46 miles of the bike like he was still racing for hardware, but then uncorked a 1:22 run…the 32nd fastest run on the day…4 minutes faster than last year. He also had the 3rd fastest T-2. That is as good of an example of overcoming an obstacle and putting it behind you as you will find. Instead of a dejected DNF, he had the race of a lifetime.

The other thing I was reminded of (once again) is one of the main reasons I love this sport……there are some damn fast older guys out there. The Blue Streak (his name is Sean Norton I later found out), ran me right into the ground at the age of 46. You should smile anytime an older person passes you cause one day you’ll be that person’s age and that means there is the possibility of better days ahead of you. I have 17 years to work on my run to get it up the level of Sean Norton, and that’s encouraging. Bob Scott is 73 and was hopping around after the race like he wasn’t tired at all. We should all be inspired by these people because their accomplishments provide hope and opportunity to us all.

Man, what the heck made you scroll all the way down here? There is not much interesting to read 'roun these parts. You must be hungry for more...like a kid licking the bottom of an ice cream bowl. I'm flattered, but I got nothing left. Meet me back here at this spot in 2005 and I have some new stuff for you to read ; ) You're the best race report reader I know!