Triathlon Nationals 2012

Collegiate Nationals 2012

4/21/12

Tuscaloosa, AL

Training background: This season, I spent the vast majority of my time training and racing for cycling, generally riding 10-14 hours per week while running and swimming 3 hours combined. This was certainly less than ideal for overall triathlon fitness, but my swim generally doesn’t suffer too much as long as I swim a lot the last few weeks before the race (which I sort of let slip this time...), and I did keep running consistently ~10 miles per week all winter and through the cycling race season. I generally went out for a long (7-10mi) moderately hard run each Monday and added as many short (1-2mi) transition “bricks” after cycling workouts or Sunday criteriums as seemed reasonable. This year I acquired a Garmin 310XT GPS watch and a Powertap, and using these gadgets for training and racing greatly improved my motivation for doing fast runs (I started running& gt;1 min/mile faster once I could see my pace on my wrist!) and also gave me great enjoyment since I’m a numbers geek.

Travel and team: MIT sent 9 athletes, 4 women and 5 men, as well as our friend Leslie from Dartmouth. This year, each team had to qualify to send athletes to Nationals, so the weakest teams no longer could compete, raising the overall standard. We flew to Birmingham on Thursday and drove to Tuscaloosa, where we stayed at a hotel filled with other triathlon teams (several of which looked far more intense and organized than our own, with gorgeous bikes and trainers and coaches). Friday we rode the course and I did some openers, with my legs feeling pretty sluggish after taking a few days off (proper tapering for once!) but power pretty high. We jumped into the river for a quick swim and found the water temperature to be nearly perfect, 69 degrees and much warmer than last year; this served as a relief, since many of us didn’t have a chance to try open-water swimming in the frigid New England waters yet this year.

Race day: We awoke to very nice weather conditions, with temperatures in the 60’s F and mostly overcast. Compared to last year’s extreme heat and humidity, this felt fantastic. Women raced first, with the first wave leaving at 7:30.

Swim: 1500m, 28:19

I was in the second wave and had a really awful time right before the start; a few days before, I had essentially torn off my knuckle with an Allen wrench while removing pedals (note: if you forgetfully take wheels off the bike before pedals, don’t be lazy and decide you can get them off anyway). Anyway, the invisible skin I’d been using completely came off as soon as I jumped in for the warmup, so I had a bleeding, torn-up hand right before the swim start. After running around frantically trying to find a medical tent or something, I found someone with electrical tape and wrapped it a few times around the hand to hold it all together. This worked sufficiently, but the whole experience left me extremely frazzled, and I swam really inefficiently, exhausting myself for a pretty awful swim time.

Bike: 40k (actually measured at 25.5mi)/1:13, 21.0mph

I really looked forward to the bike leg, since I thought I should be faster than last year and it ought to be the leg I exceled at. After a very long and inefficient transition, I took a while to get into the bike, legs feeling quite tired from the swim up until the first turnaround (the course consisted of two out-and-back loops). However, even feeling slow and low-power, I passed a large number of women who looked intense and rode with gear many times more valuable than mine, which felt satisfying. The second lap I sped up a bit, and in the end the bike time was pretty decent, 3 minutes faster than last year and averaging 21.0 mph (according to my power meter – the official time included a 1min run next to the bike to the transition mat, which slowed the average pace down).

Run: 10k/51:01, 8:07/mi

Upon starting the run, I thought some pretty negative thoughts along the lines of “Why am I doing this?” and “I don’t even care about running fast; the bike is already done, so maybe I should stop while I’m ahead”. These thoughts were not helped by a steep hill right near the beginning combined with shin pains and barely-held-off stomach cramps. Even so, I ran OK, not as fast as during my training runs but faster than last year.

Overall: 2:37: 43, 132/469 women

Overall, I did better than last year, with a similar swim, faster bike, faster run, and much slower transitions. Unfortunately, one of our team members had bike trouble and didn’t finish the race, so the MIT women’s and combined teams were not eligible to place. Even so, some individuals did quite well, and the men placed in the top half against very intense competition!

Collegiate Nationals is always a fantastic event, one of very few gatherings of all the strongest, fiercest young triathletes in the country. Sharing a venue with such amazing athletes is really neat, and it becomes better every year as I get to know more and more people from other teams. After seeing University of Colorado’s complete domination of the team omniums, I look forward even more to living and training in Boulder this summer and coming back for more road races and tris in the future!

Yale (ECCC #6)

Yale (ECCC #6)

4/7-4/8/12

Shaena Berlin

Yale always seems to be a great weekend; the weather always cooperates, the courses all start in the same central location, and the drive is (relatively) short. I last raced here two years ago as a C rider, and it was the last race I won before upgrading (and never winning again), so it brought

back fond memories. Overall, it was an amazing weekend for a good number of MIT riders; we took home KOM/QOM jerseys for Women’s A, Men’s A, Women’s B, and Men’s C!

ITT: The ITT was as expected; I went hard, paced myself well, and thankfully improved from two years ago…not much else to say, pretty boring (I do love ITT’s though).

Circuit: I was pretty worried for this circuit race, since it basically involved laps up and down a not-huge-but-definitely-there hill, and with the exception of last weekend at Penn State, I have never NOT been dropped from the main A/B pack on a hill race. However, just before the start, Andrew told me that I won the ITT (which went up the same hill), so I felt much more confident; if I got dropped from the main B pack, it could only be because I wasn’t pushing myself hard enough and not because of a strength differential. Also, knowing my ITT placing put the prospect of winning a QOM jersey in my mind, which motivated my greedy self into really not wanting to be dropped ;)

The first time up the hill, the front group of A’s went hard and gapped most of us. I stayed with the first group behind them, though, and was pretty content to be sitting near the front of the B women on an uphill. It felt great knowing that Katie, Yuri, and Christina were all up in the very first pack; we haven’t had many women come out to races yet this season, so this weekend’s strong showing reminded me a lot about team strategy. Anyway, my usual flaw in road/circuit races is going too hard – either TT-ing off the back or pulling too hard on the front of some group. In this race, for some reason I never seemed to have to pull; there was a pretty big group, and I always stayed in the top 5, but every time it would be my turn to pull we would reach a corner or a new uphill or someone would ride around me, which was great! I did not have any trouble staying near the front on the uphill, probably because it wasn’t super steep, and on the somewhat-sketchy descent everyone communicated well and took the turns cautiously enough that it didn’t feel too bad.

The final time up the hill, no one really attacked, but someone started riding harder out of a corner and we dropped most of the pack. Then, one turn before the finish, two pedestrians walking on the inside of a sharp turn startled a girl, and she and two others fell right behind me (they did get up and finish, luckily). At that point, I was third in my group behind Leslie (who just upgraded to A’s) and one strong B woman from Colby. I got a bit startled by one of the girls hitting my rear wheel when she fell down, which isn’t a real excuse but threw me off enough let a gap open behind the B woman. Coming into the finish, I nearly caught up, but not quite, so took second and my best mass-start B race ever.

Crit: With the arrival of Laura for the crit, MIT now had 5 women in the A/B race, with the potential for some serious domination. Our strategy was to practice a lead-out after the first prime, then if successful do it again at the end, unless some of us got away in a break. As the weakest member of this group, my only task was to try to drive the pace up very high on the straightway on the backside of the course; unfortunately, though I moved almost to position, a Temple girl started going hard, and I didn’t feel snappy enough to make the break. It worked out for the other 4 MIT women, though, who got away with just one other rider off the front. I was by then at the front of the pack and slowed up the pace a bit, then tried out blocking (although they almost certainly didn’t need my help, with such a strong group!) That was really fun, basically sitting in third wheel and letting two women rotate through pulling without me doing any work, then every once in a while getting prime points. Eventually we came down to a pack finish, and I came through the last lap in bad position then didn’t do well on the downhill sprint, but overall it was still a fun race and MIT took 1^st through 4^th place!

I’ve been doing well in ITT’s for a while now (*coughtriathloncough*) but not in mass start races, but after a few decent weekends I think it’s finally time to try to upgrade to A’s/Cat 3. Can’t wait for next weekend!

Penn State (ECCC #5)

Penn State “Black Mo”

3/31-4/1/12

Shaena Berlin

Penn State contains perhaps the only real mountain in an ECCC race; Black Moshannon, which rises ~1800 ft over ~6 mi. It was a long drive to get there (~7 hrs) but a great weekend.

TTT: 9.5 mi/27:20 I competed in the TTT with Yuri, Katie, and Jen; I was really nervous, since we had to finish 3 riders and Jen is still a C woman, so it would fall on me to keep up (particularly on the uphills). It went well, though; we took the first hill easy to try to keep Jen with us, then accelerated on the way back and down through the second half of the course. I actually pulled a good deal on the flats/downhills and felt pretty good. The pace slowed a bit on the steep uphill at the start of a triangle, as expected, but I did OK and we finished strong, passing several other teams along the way and placing 1^st in the A women by almost 1:00 (without aero helmets/equipment).

Road Race: This year, the road race consisted of 2 21-mile laps, each of which included >2000 ft of climbing. I was dropped from the lead pack by the start of the first hill (unfortunately dropped my chain, and by the time I recovered they were gone on the flats right before the hill), but still stayed ahead of the second pack (which contained most of the B women). I slowly, steadily climbed the hill, trying to keep my average power around 200W, which I knew I could maintain. Doing this, I passed two other girls and gained much on the next group in front of me, which contained the first 3 B women and 2^nd group of A’s. I couldn’t catch them on the rolling hills at the top, even TT-ing quite hard, so resigned myself to riding the entire second lap by myself (hopefully – assuming a group from behind didn’t catch me with less fatigue than I had). Luckily, coming past the starting line at the start of the second lap, the group in front slowed down a fair bit, so I caught back on and happily traded off pulls throughout the rest of the flat and downhill section. Starting the second climb, I fell behind the three top B women, who were pretty clearly better climbers than me, but stayed ahead of the other A. Thus I crossed the finish line in 4^th for B’s, only ~1 min behind the leaders. This was very successful for me, considering last year in the same race I did terribly.

Crit: This crit was pretty scary, though not as sketchy as last year. It contained a couple of fairly sharp turns, with a chicane in the middle. At the start, they asked us to all move over to our left so the pace car could get through, and we must have repositioned badly because I locked handlebars with someone and almost went down at the start. A bit shaky, I struggled to catch back on to the front group but did make it there. Then, a couple of laps in, I clipped my pedal on the road on the left turn into the chicane. I should have gone down and am shocked that I didn’t; however, the girl behind me did crash (luckily, she was OK and went on to take 2^nd in the race). After this, I really didn’t trust myself or my cornering abilities and took the rest of the race overly-cautiously. I won 2 primes and got points in the other 2, and ended up 4^th in B’s (one group behind the lead group of A’s+B’s).

Overall, very successful weekend for me, and I ended up first in the B’s omnium by a fair margin. However, I still don’t seem to have any upgrade points, and besides I would rather actually podium in some mass-start races before trying to upgrade; I know I’m strong, but I’m still getting dropped by the main group in many races, and since we get to race the same distance as the A women anyway and I don’t have time to go to Nationals this year, I don’t see any particular rush to upgrade. It’s nice to be near the front of the B’s, an OK to be in the middle of the B’s, but it would be embarrassing to be dropped/near the back of the A’s.

Princeton (ECCC #4)

Princeton ITT, Circuit, Crit

3/24-3/25/12

Shaena Berlin

This is a brief report written a couple of weeks after the race. Races went fine but nothing spectacular.

Circuit: This circuit race did not go very well for me; it consisted of 27 miles split up into 6 4.4-mile loops, each of which contained i) a steep ~1-min hill, ii) a couple of more gradual hills, and iii) a long downhill and flat section with a headwind. Unfortunately, I was dropped the second time up the short steep hill, when the pack accelerated; my legs felt very strong and powerful, just not light and quick enough to keep up. After that, I was with a small group or on my own for the rest; I did drop the group I was with in the final lap. Placed near the back.

Uphill ITT: This uphill ITT actually contained much more rolling and downhill than I expected; I didn’t wear an aerohelmet since I assumed it wouldn’t be of much use, but it actually might have made all the difference. I placed 2^nd in B’s, just 2 seconds behind the winner. It was 4.6 miles up, 19:38, and I set a new power record at 221 W.

Crit: I did well in this crit, although it was rather boring. It consisted of a 1.5-mile loop, mostly flat, with one sharp corner followed by a short steep uphill one turn before the finish line. Katie raced in the men’s B race directly before this one, so no one did anything very exciting; the course was such that it would be very difficult to get away in a breakaway or anything. I got a lot of practice moving through the pack and working on positioning; in fact, I won most of the primes for B’s, despite being a pretty bad sprinter, just by positioning myself near the front at the last turn. That was fun. I did something stupid near the end, which was to pull the field for the last two laps (not going that hard, but enough to tire out a bit), so didn’t end up doing great in the sprint.