Racine 70.3: Frigid Water Temperatures, High Winds, and many Unknowns

As many of you know by now it was a bit a rough month heading into Racine 70.3 in Wisconsin (about 1.5 hours north of Chicago along Lake Michigan). After the disappointment and immense amount of pain experienced at Wisconsin 70.3 from hip, hamstring, and problems in the extreme 42 degree C heat, the struggles continued getting hit by a car a few days after the race on a training ride in Thornhill. I had got hit only about half a kilometer from home. Physically I wasn’t too bad; I had minor scrapes and cuts on my ankles and elbows, a very badly sprained wrist (which two weeks later was still really sore but x-rays showed no fractures), and had a headache for about 3 days. Physically I wasn’t broken, but my beautiful girl Elektra was badly damaged. The frame, fork, front wheel, and front brake were all damaged; there was no coming back for her. I built that bike piece by piece over the last 2 years, with who knows how many hours researching various components to put onto the bike, days worth of training in the pain cave on her, and then hours and hours of cleaning and maintaining her to look and ride like she was brand new day after day. A couple days post crash I trained a little on Esperanza, my loyal road bike who is 6 years old and in perfect condition still, and then my coach contacted a fellow local triathlete who happened to have a Cervelo P5, which was not currently being used, in my size (48cm frame) and she very kindly and generously let me burrow the bike until I figured things out with mine as well as her deep zipp 808 front wheel. I can’t thank Jennifer enough for letting me burrow the bike, and to Sheryl, my swim coach, for contacting her and organizing this. It helped reduce so much stress worrying if I would have any bike to race in Racine, or in Welland a few weeks earlier, and also having a bike with a power meter so I could continue my training as normal.

A few weeks before Racine, I competed in the Aquabike at the Rose City Triathlon in Welland, where I dominated the competition with a solid swim, and then the fastest bike split in the entire field, including the pros, averaging 42.5km/hr for the 56km bike course. The next day I heard from insurance that they were going to pay entirely for the cost of the replacement which I was so happy at since the replacement cost was going to be steep. Given that I couldn’t get some of the components on the bike to be the same since they were no longer available, and finding a frame in a 48cm size is very challenging, especially just as a frameset (paying for just the frame of the bike not the wheel and components – very few bike stores sell only framesets), I was needing to do some serious research which consumed pretty much every afternoon and evening after training. I called every Cervelo dealer across North America trying to find a replacement frame, and also looking at a couple other brands such as Felt, which I really like, and Trek. Finally one store came through giving me a big discount (due to the circumstances of being in a crash) on a 48cm frameset for a Cervelo P5-3. I also purchased a Zipp 454 for my front wheel, and because we were preparing to shell out a huge chunk of money for the replacement ourselves prior to insurance coming through, we (my Dad and I) purchased SRAM Etap (wireless gear shifting) for bike. For Elektra I was intending on upgrading to SRAM etap next year, but since the frame was going to be a super-bike frame and being built from scratch, I figured let’s just go ahead and really make it a real super-bike with the etap. As the bike components started to be delivered my wrist starting feeling better and my swimming started coming back and was just rolling through my swim workouts. Eventually, the frame and chain rings that were delayed in transit came in only 9 days prior to Racine, and I got fitted to the bike only the Tuesday of Race Week. EnduroSport did an unbelievable job fitting the bike to me, making my new position very low, aggressive, and yet still comfortable, and the build itself was amazing. Venus is her name, and she is unbelievable, an absolute through and through superbike (go over to give me a follow on Instagram at frank.sorbara92 to see the beauty). I still wasn’t entirely sure if I would race the bike in Racine since I was starting to feel comfortable on Jennifer’s bike after a 190km bike two weeks before Racine, and I had not even rode the new bike outside (feeling comfortable on a trainer in a fit is different then comfortable pushing race watts outside on the open road). Even though on my ride on Wednesday the fit felt significantly different form what I was used to in terms of how low I was and also how my body now sat on the saddle (and it was also a new saddle with a slightly different shape), looking at the bike, and getting a little sense of how fast it really was, there was no way I was going to go without it. I decided to race on it and boy was it a good idea. After a ride on the Friday on the course in Racine the bike was starting to feel pretty good underneath me, and by Saturday it felt incredible in my pre-race workout (3x4minutes at 6 W/kg on 1:30 rest, followed by 3x90s at 7.6W/kg with 3:30 rest to really open up the legs).

Unfortunately, we were hearing from the race organizers that the water temperature was going to be very cold, and the swim would now be wetsuit mandatory. On Friday the water temperature was 57 F, and by Saturday morning it was 54 F. If the water dropped below 53, the swim would likely be cancelled. On Saturday I got into the water in my wetsuit to do a pre-race loosening up swim, but after three strokes my face went numb, I got a major “brain-freeze” feeling, and my hands went numb. I stopped swimming, and tried again, but three strokes more and my face, head, and hands became numb and barely useable. I kept trying to swim on and off for about an hour, but I was unable to go longer than about 20 seconds before I needed to stop due to the extreme cold. Going from feeling very confident on the bike, and swim to now being unsure if I would be able to race at all. Yes I was extremely nervous about the swim, but more so I was nervous about the bike since after the attempted swim on Saturday it took a good 30 minutes in the car with the heat on to stop shaking, so I was worried that maybe even if I could get through the swim, my body would be in real danger of getting hypothermia on the bike (it was also going to be very windy and a cool day so coming out of the water could have been a real issue). But the night before the race, after I purchased a thermal cap to wear on my head during the swim to stay warm I got psyched up and ready for the swim. I watched a bunch of videos and read a lot of articles on dealing with a cold swim, and thought that with these strategies in place, a thermal cap, and adrenaline pumping through, I’d be good. And after putting so many hours in the pool, and feeling really powerful in the water the last week it would be very disappointing if the swim was cancelled.

On the way to set up transition on race morning, after not hearing anything the night before about the swim’s situation, a volunteer told us the swim was cancelled since the water was now measuring in the high 40s!! Don’t get me wrong I fully understand the swim being cancelled in those sorts of conditions, and also looking at the water it look very rough with whitecaps, but I was very upset at how they went about cancelling the swim. Ironman didn’t communicate this information well at all, so poorly in fact that at about 6:45am (the swim would’ve started at 7) a competitor nearby me, was putting on his wetsuit getting ready for the swim until I had to tell him myself that it was cancelled. In the entire time we were in transition from 5:45 in the morning until the race start the announcer said only about 2 or 3 times that the swim was in fact cancelled. Also, the other part that really bugged me about the how they cancelled the swim, was that I found out at breakfast on Monday morning from another competitor that apparently the Coast Guard issued a statement on Saturday that said that for Sunday morning with very strong rip tides (a type of current that if your caught in essentially takes you far out to sea and is life threatening), very strong currents, high waves, and winds, that the water at this part of Lake Michigan posed and I quote “Life threatening conditions, and is unsafe for swimming.” So my problem is that if the race organizers were aware that the swim was not only 49 degrees F which is life threateningly cold in its own right (see the chart below),

but then also had strong rip tides, and high waves the night before, why would Ironman not have sent out an email, or posted something on Twitter well in advance of the race that the swim was going to be cancelled. I asked this question on race morning, and after some thought I figured out the answer to my own question. If Ironman posted something say Saturday afternoon that the swim was cancelled, maybe 50% of the competitors would potentially pull out of the race because it’s not really a triathlon without the swim, and they could potentially just sign up for a 70.3 say in Ohio a couple weeks later instead. However, if you cancel the swim on race morning only an hour before the race, than instead of 50% maybe dropping out, now only say 10-15% drop out of the race. An hour before the race, people, including myself, may just think well I already woke up at 3:30am to be here on time (so the hard part is done) may as well just race.

The frustrations with Ironman’s organization continued with how they handled converting the swim-bike-run to a bike-run. Let me first explain how they were intending on doing the swim. More and more events are now doing what is called a rolling start to the swim. This means similar to running road races, you self-seed yourself into “corrals.” So everyone intending on swimming under 27 minutes goes first, then 27-30 minutes, 30-35, etc. I think the reason events are being organized like this is that it is a way to draw more people to the sport, which is great, because the swim is usually the thing in triathlon that deters most people from participating. The mass start is very intimidating, since it is mayhem at the start with people of many different abilities all swimming at the same time. With a rolling start A: less people enter the water at a time meaning there is more space to navigate, and B: you can swim in packs with people of similar ability to yourself so not only can you draft off one another, but also for many it is reassuring to look up when sighting in the open water and see a group of people nearby, instead of swimming all by yourself in a big lake for anywhere from 25 minutes to an hour. For the race now being a bike-run with a time-trial style start you would think it would be intelligent to now start the bike leg with a rolling (self-seeded) start as well. So for example, people intending on biking 2:00-2:15 go first, then 2:15-2:25, and so on. Instead, race organizers decided to do the start by bib number so every couple seconds they sent two riders going from bibs 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, all the way up to the 3000s. I was bib 795, so this meant I would have 794 people start ahead of me on the bike from people intending on biking 3 hours for the 90km, to 5 hours+. This made for an extremely chaotic, and downright dangerous ride. Also a ride where with so many people starting at once, you would have large groups blatantly drafting with one another, and spread wide across the road making it almost impossible to pass.

I started around 8 or so, and quickly was passing masses of competitors, shouting “on your left” non-stop. Some moved over nicely, others were completely ignorant and just kept on riding right in the middle of the road as I screamed at them to move after asking nicely a few times (in Ironman if you cross the centre line of the road it is an automatic DQ). I was needing to brake harshly at times as I caught up to groups of people, and then throw in 600W surges to get around cleanly (you have to make passes within a short amount of time to avoid penalties). This type of riding continued for the first 30 minutes of the bike and my speed suffered, but my legs did feel full of energy. The bike course is incredibly bumpy, I thought Wisconsin 70.3 were the worst roads I ever rode on and these were even worse. The roads were so rough the bumps launched one of my water bottles clear out of the cage (at the time I was unaware of this). The roads are so bumpy that the day before the race during my pre-race workout the bumps actually knocked one of my aerobar pads loose, and shook the bolts so hard in my aerobars that it through the alignment of the entire front end of the bike completely off (with the fork straight the aerobars where pointed to about the 2 o’clock position). Luckily a bike store, called Erik’s Bike and Ski Shop nicely, for no charge, fixed the front end at about 6pm the night before the race, and one of the employees actually came to the race and cheered his friend who was competing and myself on. Back in the race, finally after about 30 minutes of constant surges and saying on your left like a broken record player, the competitors started to spread out somewhat, and I just rode inches to the left of the centre line passing person after person. My power was bang on now what I wanted (just about 5 W/kg) and the speed was coming back. I averaged 48 km/hr for about 15 minutes as soon as I got free of the massive groups of people and felt great.

The bike felt magnificent. I stayed extremely disciplined on the bike as we turned into a strong headwind and kept my power steady. I didn’t get worried and panic that my speed dropped a little going into the wind. That I think is the biggest advantage of having a power meter. If I didn’t have one, when the speed dropped I may have started pushing a lot more power to keep the speed up but that would burn a lot of matches, and would cost you dearly late in the bike and on the run. Kept chugging along passing people, seeing some absolutely obvious drafting – a guy the next morning actually admitted to me that he and about 12 other guys got in a group and were taking turns pulling on the front and rode the entire course together like a Peloton in the Tour de France. Only one of them was DQ’ed! How is that fair - I have no clue. Why is drafting only a 1-minute penalty when it can save you 10 minutes at least over 90 km I don’t know. Ironman really needs to step it up when it comes to enforcing rules out on the bike course. I fully understand that their priority is that the pro race is fair, but they also need to be assertive at enforcing the rules for age-groupers. Yes, we aren’t currently racing for 50000$ cash, but for people like me who are trying to earn their professional status, it is imperative that the rules are enforced since I’m still competing against the other Age-groupers. In the World Championships for example if I come Top 3 in my Age Group I automatically qualify for professional status. So the pro race is important to monitor for sure with all that money on the line, but there is also a lot on the line for some of the Age-Groupers as well. But anyways thier obvious cheating didn’t affect me this time around since I was passing these groups of drafters, who had started around 20 minutes before me, like they were standing still. The way Venus can just walk away from people is unreal - it also helps being in a super slippery position, and pushing 5 W/kg ;).  My goal for the bike was around and hopefully under 2:10. The first 30 minutes really cost me a lot of speed, and having to brake hard at times hurt a lot, but the power still ended up being a new 70.3 PB, and the time was 2:10:59 which is also a big PB for the 90km – it’s a 41.5km/hr average. Considering I figured to have lost anywhere from 2-3 minutes having to weave around people I was still very happy with the bike, and thrilled with how well I paced it especially on the segments into the wind where with how good my legs were feeling I probably could have really hammered, but I stayed smart and stuck to my game plan.

Onto the run. I hadn’t taken a single stride since Wisconsin 70.3, so I really had no clue what was going to happen here. My plan was to be extremely conservative and patient. I didn’t want to make the mistake of letting the excitement from the bike carry over to run, and start out so quickly that I implode. When I was marathon-ing I read a lot of running books to learn about what makes the elites elite. How the best got to the top, and stay there. Just like with running, I’m a student to the sport of triathlon, and try to learn as much as I can about strategy, and various methodologies from reading. I figure in your spare time after training your body physically, why not learn a little more about the mental side of the sport, or different strategies that can just add that extra layer to your performances. My latest book called Triathlon 2.0: Data-Driven Performance Training, discusses how field studies from Kona (Ironman World Championships) show how critical the pacing of that first mile off the bike is to your overall run performance in that even for the pro men and women if they run that first mile off the bike only 20 seconds per mile faster than they intend on realistically running, odds are they will be walking at some point in the race. Furthermore, odds are that if you walk at one point in the race, you will likely walk multiple times during the race (it becomes an out). So with that in mind, the game plan was stay relaxed until about 15-16km and then just bring it home as hard as my legs allow. I started out running about 4:00-4:06/km pace, and it felt very easy.

I could feel my hamstring doing its usual thing (feeling like it could pull on me) but just kept the strides nice and quick to take off some of the strain on the hamstring. Overall though it felt super chilled. I was not breathing hard at all, and was really staying quite relaxed. Even though it felt so easy at this point, I stuck to my pace plan. I knew that at some point the lack of running, and therefore run specific endurance would come into play, and that the hip could potentially go at any point. So I just kept the pace where it was. At about 16km, what I predicted would happen happened, and I was so glad that I stuck to my pace plan early on because now the calves, and quads really started biting bad but I was already at 16km with only 5 to go. My whole body was now in real trouble, and in a lot of pain. Not in my hip, but just the whole body in general was feeling the lack of running. Downhills became a real test to stay even upright, because my legs were feeling like bambi’s that they could give out any moment. I gritted my teeth, and just kept repeating and saying to myself “I got this.” I made it to 19km with the pace still solid, the 20^th kilometer was the only rough kilometer of the run, but then managed to actually have a half-decent kick to line. Sure I was limping as I kicked but it was still a solid finish. I was so incredibly happy how smart I played it on the run being so disciplined to stick to the plan early on. Sure I could have potentially gone quicker on the run (I ran 1:28 so 4:12/km average for the 21.1km) if early on I pushed the pace a little when 4:00/km pace was feeling really relaxed, but there is also a chance that had I done that either I wouldn’t have finished at all, or if instead of the legs started to bite at 16km they started to go at 10km, and in that case the time would have been much slower. Also, the pace I selected and stuck to didn’t hurt the hip at all, and didn’t cause the hamstring to completely pull on me. If I pushed the pace early there is possibility that in addition to the quads, calves, and back going due to the lack of run-specific endurance that I would’ve also had to deal with the hip and hamstring like I did in Wisconsin 70.3. Overall, I think this was my smartest race I have ever executed. It was a bike PB, and a run PB (in 70.3), and if I add my usual swim onto the race would’ve been around a 4:06-7 half-ironman, which would be a 9-10 minute PB for the 70.3 distance. The time in the end didn’t end up getting me my pro-card automatically since the Winner Sam Appleton from Australia just had a remarkable day. A day where if you add his normal swim time onto his overall bike-run time it would be very close to if not breaking the world record over the 70.3. His performance on that day, would win any 70.3 anywhere in the world against any competition in my opinion. However, even if I didn’t get the card on this day, my bike was fantastic (and swim is feeling very good as well), and I’m confident that I can come top-3 in the Age-Group at the World Championships in either ITU Worlds at Penticton, or Ironman Worlds in Chattanooga now that I know the hip can stay intact with a little running. So that’s what I’m going to do, run a little maybe 3 times per week just to gain a little run-specific endurance and rip it in World’s now that I know the hip is strong enough to withstand running. With even just a little run training I am confident that I can take a huge amount of time off what I ran especially knowing that 4:00/km pace off a sizzling bike felt so easy, and didn’t cause any further damage to the hip. Knowing that, and just having that confidence that the hip will hold up will help me confidently push that pace in World’s and get that pro card.

Thank you so much to all my supporters and sponsors: Skechers Performance Division, Infinit Nutrition, Rudy Project, Revolver Wheels, Zone3 and Compressport. For now it’s trying to recover from the race this week likely by Saturday I’ll do my first big big workout back, and then putting in some major league training up until ITU Worlds August 27^th. Before then I have another Aquabike race in Kingston, where I’m defending champion, so I’ll be looking to defend that title. This time may be a little tougher since I’ll be training right through the race, since with Penticton on the horizon in about 6 weeks I don’t won’t to waste time with a second taper.