Ben’s Pro Debut: St. George 70.3 Race Report

The one I had been dreaming of. The Pro debut. And at the North American Pro Championships no less.

It takes a village:

Training:

To say that training leading into St. George was spotty would be an understatement. After a great January and February, Summer and I just started getting relentlessly crushed by sickness. With colds, into full blown flu, into more colds, into strange stomach issues, I would estimate I had 5-6 total weeks of limited training, including 2 weeks totally off for the flu. It was certainly frustrating, but there just wasn’t anything I could do. What it meant was that for the first time ever I went in to a race wishing I had another month or so to prepare. Now this isn’t to say that I didn’t think I was prepared, I just knew that with another month I knew that I could shorten the gap to me and the top of the field. The good news was that we don’t only race once in a season. This race, as important as it was to me being my first pro race, was exactly that; my first pro race. With all the setbacks my coach encouraged me to look at this one as a test and a learning experience, with our true main focus being Eagleman 70.3 in June. I’m sure I “mmhmm’d” in agreement over the phone while shaking my head in disagreement. I wanted to come out hard in my first pro race.

It would be disingenuous however, to say that there was no good training in there. I had some great weeks and some even better isolated workouts. I wrote a blog post a week before St. George about the mental struggle of having lots of bad workouts mixed in with a few good ones. I’ll highlight the main point here in the form of a quote from my friend and training buddy.

“A good workout is never a fluke. Can’t pull fitness out of thin air. Bad ones are though. Plenty of random reasons a workout can go south.”

On this note, I’ll highlight one swim, bike, and run workout that assured me that I was in fact fit and ready to race. Keep in mind I train at elevation, and while St. George is not sea level it certainly did have more of that delicious oxygen.

Swim: April 23rd

Warm up
12×200 (scy) on the 2:25
CD
TrainingPeaks comment: “Fast first one and then coming in right around 2:21-22 for the rest of them. Was probably leaving on the 2:27-28 for the last 6. Overall felt pretty decent. This one was more muscular and less breathing limited.”

Bike: January 27th (way before but it was in the pre-sickness block)

Warmup
250 watts for 250 minutes
CD
TrainingPeaks comment: “Struggled hard with the last 40 minutes but had built just enough of a buffer to keep the 250 average. Part bonk but also a lot of just leg fatigue. I tried to do my best with fueling but by the end any time i went to eat or drink my heart rate would go up and I wouldn’t get enough air. Brutal workout.”

Run: April 23rd

15 minutes easy straight into…
30 minutes at best effort (Joe Friel’s threshold test)
CD
TrainingPeaks comment: “30 min at 5:34 pace with an average HR of 172. Pretty much just cruising. Only about 20 minutes after I finished the swim also. Caught in a pretty painful hailstorm for the last 10-15 minutes haha, had to take cover a few times off the path.”

Pre race:

Morning of:

Alarm went off around 4:15 and I went straight to the coffee machine. It’s pretty much a must for me at this point as it really, and I mean really, helps clear out my system. 20oz of coffee plus a few pieces of toast and peanut butter and one banana made its way into my system by 5am, about 2 hours before the race start. I had another cup of coffee at 5:00 accounting for my standard 2-3 cups in the morning. From that point on my morning looked something like this: Inflate tires – poop – place bottles – poop – pop an AltRed – poop – wetsuit on – well at that point we know pooping isn’t convenient so it was time to head to the start line. Got a bit of a swim warmup in. As I was walking down to the water one of the photographer pointed out to their buddy that my wetsuit more closely resembled a big black piece of swiss cheese than something that was supposed to be keeping water out. I honestly hate swimming in a wetsuit and it might be because the only one I’ve ever owned is a Xterra I got 2nd hand that probably doesn’t fit me perfectly, despite being a Medium-Long. Oh well. It was race time.

Swim:

Moral: Smarter

Strava Activity

T1:

Bike:

Moral: Stronger

Strava Activity

I had gone in to this race expecting to come out of the water with a pack and was going to try to hang on the them to the best of my ability. I was completely ready to blow myself up on the bike just to hang in the race. I was borrowing one of Andy Pott’s bikes so I didn’t have power to hold me back. Much to my dismay though I simply wasn’t “in” the race. I passed a few women and a few men early on and just tried to keep the pressure up but I was definitely far from burying myself like I planned. I was also planning on crushing the Snow Canyon climb 45 miles in because I knew I could recover on the downhill after. The 5 mile Snow Canyon climb is one of the highlights of St. George and is hyped up as a monster of a hill, however I found it to be the exact opposite. The scenery is incredibly beautiful, but the hill itself was dare I say, disappointing. Not that that’s a bad thing, but I was riding it and expecting the hard part to come and then I was at the top. I hadn’t given myself the chance to hurt like I was expecting. I took the descent as an opportunity to put some time back on a pack of 3 I could see maybe half a mile ahead of me. My watch said I topped out at 57mph on the descent, which is possible but I find that a little unlikely; definitely got over 50mph though. I downed as much fluid as I could heading back to town. My nutrition had gone pretty much according to plan: one bottle of gatorade endurance by mile 15, another by mile 40 or so, then another leading into the end of the race, plus about a package and a half of gatorade endurance carb chews. In retrospect, the relative lower effort in which I biked certainly gave my run a boost, but I wasn’t thinking about that going into T2. I was thinking about how many people I would need to pass to make my way into 10th place.

T2:

Apparently I’m really good at T2. At Indian Wells I had the fastest T2 in the entire race including the pros, and here I’m pretty sure I had the 2nd fastest. At this point I had come into T2 less than a minute behind the pack of 3 guys I had been chasing and I could smell blood in the water. The hunt was on.

Run:

Moral: Fiercer

Strava Activity

The day before the race my coach, who is pretty much the opposite of an outcome driven coach, did me a favor and reminded me that I was still a strong runner and that triathlon is 3 events. “If you’re not where you want to be coming off the bike, there is still time.” These words rang my head as I started the 4 mile climb out of town. My watch shows my first two miles as 5:42 and 5:40 with a total elevation gain of 190ft. I actively dropped my effort as I knew that probably wasn’t going to be sustainable. My next mile was 6:22 with 225ft of gain. Brutal. For those first 4 miles I pretty much did one thing; visualize throwing myself downhill at every chance I got. And I did just that. I had visualized this for days, I knew my size would be a disadvantage for climbing but I could just as easily turn that into a strength on the downhills. And I did. I had caught a few people and was trying to count the pros ahead of me on the out and backs. By mile 8 I was informed that I was in 11th place and was 90 seconds down from 10th. Doable.

At this point though, my calves had already started cramping up and I was getting some quad soreness I’m not used to due to the incredibly pounding force of running downhill on pavement at 5 minute pace or faster (TrainingPeaks had my max pace as 4:35/mile and I believe it). I encountered some encouraging spectators calling me out by name and telling me 10th was within reach which was actually pretty huge as I was slogging up the final brutal uphill just before the 4 mile descent back into town. I could see that I was putting time on 10th and a close 9th but much to my dismay I saw 10th catch 9th up ahead of me which I assumed would push both to go even harder. My work was cut out for me. I kept wondering how I would feel if I was seconds off of a 10th place finish knowing I had left too much out on the swim course. I didn’t want to have to deal with that mental battle after finishing. I really, really wanted to catch this guy.

Post Race:

What’s Next:

St. George was a learning experience, but The takeaway from the swim were clear: position smarter, I’d now rather be on the end and swim and extra 15 meters than lose a ton of time fighting my fellow racers. I still lost a decent chunk of time on the bike to most of the other pros, but it doesn’t have to be like that: I need to continue getting stronger (biking is my newest sport) and learn to actually race the bike rather than just riding to survive. The run certainly taught me that I can unlock new levels of performance when I feel the fierceness of competition. It was easy to push when the difference between me and a paycheck was 1 guy I could see for 5 miles, but I need to be able to unlock that same drive when I don’t have someone I’m chasing or when the outcome isn’t so black and white.

I also believe St. George set the tone for what I want my experience in the pro ranks to look like. I’m here to be competitive. I wouldn’t have necessarily been disappointed if I hadn’t finished in the money here, but it was certainly a dream of mine. At this point, I see no reason why I can’t finish in the money at every other 70.3 I do this season. Of course I can’t control who shows up, and certainly my coach doesn’t want me setting goals relating to place, but if I want this to be my job, and especially my career, I need to bring it every race.

Summer and I are both heading to Eagleman 70.3 where I have dreams of a top 3 finish. I don’t state this lightly but I really believe that course will suit me much better and with a generally weaker field, anything is possible.

Once again, thanks for all the support, not just from the individuals listed at the start, but from Instagram and Slowtwitch and all the other online communities I interact with. As much of a black hole as it can be, the internet is a massive resource and I’ve learned a ton about the sport there and hope to be able to give back to aspiring triathletes all around the world. If you see Summer or I at a race, come up and say hi! Until next time,

Ben Deal