Race Coverage
Life Does Not Suck...
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Friday, 21 August 2015 00:10
By Ryan Wippler
Big Lake Race Report - So this is it. Last “Oly” of the season for this guy. Time to see if the past year of 5:00 am wake-ups and hundreds of hours of training would lead to the result-that goal set almost one year ago-to go 2:05 on an olympic tri. I hadn’t felt this kind of build up since Grandma’s Marathon 2013 when I qualified for Boston. Casey Miller and Wade Cruser were my main competition, neither of which I had beaten this year. Usually when the pressure builds, I perform better. This is how my day went down.
Casey and I BS’d a bit before our swim wave. He told me he was trying to get his mojo back after a half Ironman debacle a few weeks earlier where he suffered a back injury from a wetsuit removing service (didn’t know such a thing existed) and was having shooting pain down his leg. I told him of my lofty goal for the day and hoped to keep him close through-out the race as a motivating force.
I was trying a new one piece trisuit with sleeves which was supposed to be super aero on the bike. I had used it and won the week before at Lake Minnewaska. It makes what go for my guns these days look like pipe-cleaners; instant skinny arms! If only they...
made jeans… More worrisome than my vanity, though, was that it was a bit restrictive in the shoulders. My tri-kit definitely made the swim harder than it needed to be, but so did early zig-zagging of the leaders of our wave. At about a 0.33 mile in, I found rhythm and myself swimming next to Casey (who I swam next to at Average Joe Tri) which was where I wanted to be. I tucked in behind, and the rest of the swim was a relatively relaxed affair as Casey weaved a path through the sprint racers as we stroked toward the shore. There was one lanky swimmer, Todd Smith I think, who’s long strong smooth stroke and two-beat kick was a brief but graceful wonder to behold, as he quickly left us in his wake just before T1.
Casey is a pro and was long gone out of transition while I was still putting on my socks and shoes. After mounting my QR, I was off, and feeling pretty good. The goal was to hold 25mph for the hour ride-another goal I had set for the season. I got into that comfortable pedaling pattern around 90 rpm in a nice low aero position. My sleeved tri-suit, which had previous felt restrictive in the water, was now feeling fast-skinny arm fast. I slowly reeled in Casey and passed him around mile 8 or so. There was another cyclist with an orange helmet in front of him who sped up when I approached. It took me the better part of 2 miles or so just to pass that guy. At about mile 11.5 I saw Wade Cruser pass us on the return route. That was not good. I figured if we were maintaining similar speed, he should be 3 mins ahead (his wave started 3 min earlier) or about 1.3 miles on the bike. Not 2 miles! That did not bode well for my chances as he had historically been a better runner than I. It mattered not; he’d kicked my butt in every other Granite Man race this year. Keep your eyes on the 2:05 prize, Ryan. I was maintaining 25 mph, but at every corner I would look back and Casey and orange helmet were battling back there only 10 seconds behind. I started taking corners more aggressively to pull away and almost laid my PR6 down on a particularly sketchy corner. Wow that was stupid! As I nearly poo’d myself. I was able to pick up the pace when we merged with the sprint racers. There is something about the act of passing other competitors (even if they are not in your race) that always gives me an instant shot of energy. The rest of the bike leg was a strong steady affair that allowed me to draw ahead and out of sight of Casey and orange, so that when I left T2, they were still nowhere to be seen.
Running scared. That’s right, Ryan. You should be afraid. Casey Miller is a stupid fast runner off of the bike. He scorned me on the run at Average Joe. Moments in the lead of him always feels like borrowed time. You count the seconds, if you’re lucky- the minutes, because you know eventually he’s going to catch you. Steam roller that guy is. Is there anything scarier in our sport than a fast runner? I ran my scared butt right out of T2, up an un-even chambered ankle rolling and potential dream crushing uphill grassy section to the road and sidewalk that follows the lake known as, well, Big Lake. With effort I was holding 6:00 min/miles, but at mile one it felt like someone stuck a knife in the side of my right knee. IT band. Hello, old friend…I haven’t made your acquaintance in a while. I was truly afraid. Instead of trying to hold off the steam roller behind, my fear was that of not finishing the race. I was so close to my 2:05 goal, but so far (5miles) away. There is no courage in the absence of fear. I’m going for it, even if it hobbles me. Pain is momentary, regret is not. I went flat out for the next 5 miles. It did hurt. Casey did catch me-just after the turn-around. (He told me after the race he was really hurting too and had such a hard time catching me that he was on the verge of giving in.) Both of us finished strong. While running together briefly we wondered where Wade Cruser was. It was an out and back course, but we hadn’t seen him. I thought, holy crap, that dude was so far ahead I mistook him for a sprint racer! Casey ended up kicking my ass, again. But as I was sprinting towards the finish line on that same dream crushing off-chamber grassy knoll, watching the clock tick upwards from 2:04:30, I saw Casey concentrating on the clock. When our eyes met we both smiled. We both knew I wasn’t going 2:05 today, because I just finished 2:04:39! High fives and smiles all around helped keep the nausea and fierce urge to vomit at bay. As soon as I stopped moving, the knife was thankfully removed from my right knee and re-sheathed for another day. I couldn’t stop grinning like a clown for the rest of the morning. I ran into Bill Corcoran, friend and the man behind Granite Man Races, and thanked him for putting on a great season of races. I felt like I was floating the next 45 minutes while I packed up and stowed my gear in my GTI, fed, rehydrated, and stretched. It wasn’t until I ran into Casey again, who introduced me to his lovely wife, son, and daughter (Ever notice nice guys have nicer families?), that I learned that Wade had taken a wrong turn during the run. We were 1st and 2nd overall! Wow, sub-2:05 and 2nd overall. Life does not suck. Now about that knee…RPW
