USAT Age Group Nationals 2011

Burlington, Vermont
August 20, 2011

My first age group nats!

1500M SWIM --- 40km BIKE --- 10km RUN

Intro:
This race was semi planned last minute in the sense that I knew that I wanted to race, but I kept putting off signing up for various reasons. I received an invitation to do the race from USAT earlier in the summer because I was ranked 38th in the nation in my Age Group in 2010 and was named an Honorable Mention All-American. They tried to sweeten the deal to get me to show up with a discount code.. but the selling point that eventually swayed my mom to say okay to letting me sign up was the potential to qualify for Worlds in NZ in 2012. She was totally down for another triathlon vacation haha.

There was a small scare in July when the race actually sold out because USAT didn’t allocate enough race slots… so I put my name on the waiting list for sign-ups as soon as I saw the complaints on Slowtwitch. Luckily, I got an email in the next two days that I was good to go and signed up for the race! Apparently USAT figured out a way to convince Burlington that they had the capabilities for more race entries.

This was an interesting month of August. I flew out on Wednesday, August 17th, towards the east coast and then left the following morning for the road trip to Vermont. We settled in and I went and did a short jog along Lake Champlain near the transition area for the race. After only being there for one sunset, I determined that Burlington is absolutely beautiful. A friend of mine spent all summer in Burlington and had told me that the sunsets over the lake were unreal.. and boy was he right. I never knew the entire sky could light up with pinks and oranges like that.

Friday consisted of race check-in, rolling around on the bike, dipping into the lake for a short swim, and abandoning my bike at the mandatory bike-drop at transition. We ordered some chicken and pasta from the nearby Olive Garden and focused on getting ready for the next day’s race!

Pre-race:
Getting to the race and finding parking was surprisingly simple and we got a spot right next to transition. Cha-ching! Setting up and going through the pre-race ‘rituals’ were relatively smooth. Got the wetsuit on and made my way to the swim start!
Fortunately for me, the F20-24 group was Wave #2 in the whole race! There are advantages of being in the back waves, but I was really glad that I’d have some more open water and roads for this race.

Swim= 20:45 – 8th fastest swim split in AG, 8th overall female swim split

I’ve never lined up for a swim start before and actually been seriously intimated by the girls standing around me.. but this was a whole new ball game. Everyone was talking about the D1 schools they swim/swam for and some of them just looked fast. You can always tell who the real swimmers are by the goggle selections.

We jumped in the water and I kept an eye out for a few girls I knew would kick it on the swim so I could try and hang on behind them. In-water starts are always a pain, but I had a pretty great start for once and ended up in a lead pack right away towards the first buoy. After the second buoy we slammed into the stragglers of the older men’s wave ahead of us and everything was broken up from there. I was just dodging guys left and right all the way to the last turn into shore. At that point I was going stroke for stroke with another girl and I came out of the water next to her; later I realized that she was the girl who ended up winning the F20-24 AG.

T1= 1:07

Bike=1:08:04 – 3rd fastest bike split in AG, 51st overall female bike split
Average power = 184
Average speed = 21.9
Bike HR Avg = 180

Within the first 4 minutes of the bike, I had a horrifying experience. My Profile Design water bottle on my aero bars decided to fling off my bike when I hit a huge lip in the pavement that hadn’t been marked or emphasized by the volunteers standing around… I then proceeded to yell NOOOOOOO as I saw it fall to the ground and empty everywhere, and made the split second decision to suck it up and somehow live with one meager bottle with Gatorade for 24 miles. Needless to say, I was very concerned that wasn’t going to be enough hydration.

All I can say about this bike is that it was FAST. I had seen the elevation profile (but we didn’t drive the course, bad move) and knew that the first part was uphill, then it plateaued with flats and rolling hills, and the last part was downhill to transition. So my plan was to work the beginning and keep it strong, then blast it after the turn-around. The beginning was tricky and my HR skyrocketed from the start, but once I got a rhythm I started passing some of the guys and girls ahead of me.

I was high on life at the end of the bike when everyone was yelling “3RD FEMALE!” Third? Really?! I guess I passed 5 girls during the bike and moved my way up from 8th out of the swim to 3rd into T2! Yikes.

T2= 1:14
Terrible T2.
When I hung up my bike after getting to my spot on the rack, I got an odd cramp for the first time ever during T2. I couldn’t bend down to get my shoes on because my left quad would seize up and cramp. So after two attempts I had to just pull it back and stretch it for a few seconds and then I finally got the shoes on.
And then, I dropped a Gu and turned around and added like 5 seconds.
And then I decided not to listen to the guy yelling “Watch your step here! It’s slippery!!”… and of course I slipped and slammed onto the ground hard right at the transition exit where everyone simultaneously groaned at my clumsiness. Embarrassing.

The most hilarious part of all of that mess is that my mom, sitting all the way at her computer early in the morning in California, saw me totally wipe out via the live stream coverage that USAT was broadcasting online. I got my phone after the race and there was a text from her that said, “I saw you fall : (” Even more embarrassing that everyone on the live stream saw me! Haha oh just my luck.

Run = 47:46
Run pace = 7:41 min/mile
Run HR Avg = 184
Only an elevation gain of 217 feet according to my Garmin.

Feeling a bit sheepish after falling, I made my way around transition area to the one and only hill on the run course and just powered up it as best I could with wobbly legs. I could feel the spot where I cramped up in T2 and just prayed that it wouldn’t hurt me later. I also had the sinking feeling that I didn’t drink enough on the bike because of the bottle mis-hap, so I made it a point to get a cup of water at every mile.

Personally I felt like I was moving at a really good pace.. but it never helps when there girls start passing me left and right in the first few miles. I didn’t get discouraged much though, because I had my Garmin watch telling me that I was going faster than any pace I’ve ever done for a 10k! After about mile 4, the last two miles were a gradual descent back down to lake-level at transition and I was moving my legs as fast as possible. I remember some guy in a Duke tshirt telling me “Come on, Stevens, you’re the 16th girl. Hang on.” In hindsight, I now realize that he was trying to tell me I was in the top 18 winner slots, but at the time I was annoyed that he told me my place with .2 miles left to sprint. Needless to say, I gave it all I had to the finish and the pictures at the finish line show how dead I was..

Considering I’m not much of a runner, I’m pretty happy with the fact that I was in the top 50% of the run times in my age group! It was also a personal BEST TIME! My run at Westchester last year was a 48:06, so I broke the 48-minute mark for the first time! Super stoked about that split. I really really really need to get under :45 for Collegiate Nats. New goal.

Overall time = 2:18:55

That’s less than a minute slower than Westchester’s overall time.. but there were a lot of different factors coming into play here and I’m at the point now where it’s hard to compare different times on varying courses (especially swims).

But I’d definitely say this was my best Olympic distance race I’ve ever done! It’s going to be great to compare this to Westchester in about a month!

Hopefully this is a sign that the NECTC season is going to be awesome!!!!! http://nectc.net/calendar_11.php

Mammoth Summer Trip 2011

2^nd Annual Mammoth Mountain Father/Daughter Trip!

Well this trip started the same way it did last year, as an attempt to get the whole family up to Mammoth. But alas, Garrison complained that he wanted to see a few friends for the ‘last time’ and Mom needed to take care of ‘work and the dog.’ Excuses excuses. Whatever, more time for me and Dad to shred on our own down the mountain!

Friday:

My dad so graciously packed up the truck while I was at work in the afternoon and after I finished up some stuff, we were off around 6pm, fingers crossed we wouldn’t hit too much traffic. We arrived in Mammoth around 12:30am and hit the sack.

Saturday:

Mountain biking all day long!

We did approximately 40 miles of riding in 4 hours. We were on the mountain for much longer, but that was the actual ride time in the saddle according to my new fancy Garmin.

The first few runs were AWESOME and I fell in love with it again. It pains me that I only mange a few days of mountain biking out of the whole year. But hopefully I’ll find more time next year now that I’m working for Felt and all the guys in the office love it. New Felt mtn bike by this time next year? I think yes.

My dad was on cloud 9. He’s in his element when he’s mountain biking on his Santa Cruz and I love riding with him because he just can’t get enough of it. By the end of the afternoon, however, we were absolutely pooped. Mountain biking is so fun that you forget how hard it is and how exhausting it can be until you’re completely spent and you find yourself shaking as your speeding through turns at the end of the day. That’s the best kid of workout.. when you don’t care how tired you are because it’s too damn fun.

Large chuck of ice that would've been in the middle of the trail

We finally decided to head back to the hotel when we were too exhausted to go on. I had made up my mind earlier to do the same run I did last year, so I got changed into running gear when we got back to the room. Dad fell asleep instantly and took a nap while I was out. I ran down Old Mammoth Road and off into this Cross Country Skiing Paved pathway that I found last year. The legs were not happy, but I was high on life. I could do runs like that every day.

After a much needed shower, we fueled up at the best restaurant in Mammoth, Base Camp Café!

It’s a Nauman family favorite. Just as satisfying as expected… especially with a couple of these.

Topped off the night with some Ben & Jerry’s at the town center place and settled in for our last night.

Sunday:

Early morning ride!

Yes, I’m crazy.. but I REALLY wanted to get a high-alt road ride in. It wasn’t even that long of a ride, but those 17 miles kicked me to the curb. My Garmin tells me it was 2,245 ft of Elevation Gain over that short distance and my highest point reached was 9,019 ft. I would consider myself to be in pretty good shape at the moment, but biking anywhere around 8,000 ft made me feel like I was an out-of-shape schmuck. Thanks, oxygen.

I had ridden up to Horseshoe Lake, then around Lake Mary, and back down to the main part of town and made a left up Minaret Road all the way to the Main Lodge. It was a 834 ft climb in 3.89 miles. I don’t know if that’s impressive or not. I only wanted to do it because I’ve been driving up that road for years and it would feel awesome to just power up it on my own. And it did.

Mountain biking again!

My dad had driven up the road in the truck when I started the climb, so I met him up there and swapped out bikes for the Trek. We only had the will power to do a few runs, but we were on the mountain for a couple hours. Both of us were pretty exhausted from the day before, and my legs were mad at me from everything else as well. I actually fell over the handlebars dropping off of one of the bridges on 7 Bridges and called it quits after that run. It was one of those slow-mo crashes you can’t do anything about but curse while it’s happening. Got a couple solid bruises to show for it.

So I went and laid in the back of the truck while my Dad went and did a downhill run down the front of the mountain. We cleaned up after that and made a pit stop at Starbucks before heading back to Orange County.

Last-minute high-altitude summer training in the books!

Hopefully I haven’t wrecked my legs too much… and I’m optimistic that 2 weeks is enough time to recover/taper for AG Nationals!

Thanks for reading.

Ta Ta For Now...

New Oakley shades, mon

Irvine Lake Mud Run

"We're doing a mud run?!"

July 17^th, 2011

4^th in Age Group

16^th Female

Final Time of 40:08 for a 5k+ Run w/ Obstacles!!!

There really isn’t much to say about this race, but it was MUDDY!

We totally signed up for this race on a whim the day before! Mama Nauman found an article about the race in the OCRegister and asked Garrison and Dad about. Apparently my Dad said that if I was interested, he was interested. So mom told me to be interested and that was it! Next thing I knew… Garrison, Dad, and I were all signed up and even Gavin (Garrison’s BFF) was tagging along for the ridiculous race!

It was really fun. I was using it more as a training run than anything. Told myself to keep the heart rate high for 40 minutes and have fun : )

I surprised myself with a top 7% finish out of all the women there haha but I was just running to beat Garrison and Gavin so I guess that placed me pretty well.

Here are some nasty pictures from the race:

Carlsbad Sprint Triathlon 2011

4th year in a row!

Wow, I can’t believe that 4 years ago I did my first triathlon. That seems so crazy and I definitely have come a long way since then. This Carlsbad race has been so good to me and it’s definitely one of my most favorite sprints of all time. The ocean swim is perfect, the bike is a perfect mix of flats and ups and downs, and the run is a smooth straightaway. Muy bien.

The exciting part about this year was that there were going to be 3 Naumans competing in the race!

Yup, Garrison signed up along with me and my Dad and he actually committed to doing it. Thus, the madre was going to be the chauffer and the videographer for the day!

We picked up our packet the day before at the Health Expo in San Diego, and that was a bit of an annoying drive just to get down there for our packets. But we got all ready and set up on Saturday night so that we were good to go early on Sunday!

Wakeup time (much to Garrison’s discontent): 5:00am.

We drove down to Carlsbad and parked in the neighborhood area like usual near the Tamarack State Beach. We got there at 6:20am and thought we had gotten there with plenty of time because transition wasn’t supposed to open til 6:30am. Well, it did open then, but just like last year there was a long line extending down the beach walkway with triathletes and their bicycles just waiting around to get into transition. We had to walk all the way down to the end of the line and double back just to get into the transition area and start setting up. From experience, I knew the drill with those port-o-potties and the long line, so I dropped my stuff down right away and stood in line for the bathroom.

I set my stuff up like usual and just hung around with Dad and Garrison mulling over the usual stuff and making sure we had all the necessary items for our area. Pre-triathlon moments are very boring and filled with anxiety. All the races I’ve done so far this year have been filled with a lot of waiting around for the race to start in the mornings.. what’s up with that.

Swim= 15:51

The swim this year was gnarly! The waves were coming in with some pretty big sets and everyone was pretty weary as we were leading up to the race start.

Garrison’s wave started at 8:15, Dad’s at 8:20, and mine at 8:30. Because I was so many waves back, I was watching all of the people ahead get smashed by some of the pretty big waves. Because I’m a crazy person and I love the ocean, I was actually psyched about the huge waves and the strong current because that totally plays as an advantage to me.

My swim time from last year was a 14:27 and it wasn’t even good for that course because the year before I did a 13:22 and the year before that was also in the 13 minute range. So it’s pretty clear that the currents were super strong and this year’s swim was much more of a struggle than the years before.

Regardless, I pushed through the current and dodged a lot of people to get into shore as fast as possible. My swim exit was a little sloppy and I think I stood up to soon to try and run out. But overall, definitely a struggle and not my most graceful swim.

T1= NA

Bike= 0:44:11

Average power = 184

Average speed = 22.67

There was at least one girl out of the water before me and she was at my rack when I got there to grab my bike. Lucky for me, she decided to take the time to put socks on before heading out on the bike, so I caught up in no time and we were actually off on the course at the same time.

Tip from last year that I remembered was putting my bike in the lowest gear possible to climb up that hill coming out of the transition area.

I ended up going back and forth with that girl from my rack and after the second time, I decided to just hang back and keep her in my sight for the first half of the bike, and then gun it home for the back half has hard as I could. If I passed her, so be it, and if not then it would just keep being annoying. The plan worked out very well because I had so much energy for that back half that I was able to speed by her and a few guys who were also playing around me and hold them off all the way to the transition area.

Last year’s bike time was listed as a 44:37 so I was just barely under that time this year. I actually felt really powerful like I mentioned and I was moving on that back half of the course like a bat out of hell. My average power for the whole course was 185. My average power for the last section that I booked it was 205! Hell yeaaaah.

Well now, I just went through my standings for this bike and I did pretty well! I had the 4^th fastest female bike split! That means I’m moving closer to my goal of the fastest bike split at College Tri Nats next year! Wel… besides the fact that one of the women who beat me was 55 years old (she beat my by 1 second), I guess that was a good bike split haha.

I know I’m definitely in California when I have the 5^th fastest swim time and the 4^th fastest bike time…

T2= NA

Run = 0:25:41

Run pace = 8:16

Last year’s run was blistering at a 23:44 and the year before that was actually a 24:38. Which is really disheartening because that’s when I didn’t consider myself a good runner. I was in such a good position and in such good shape.. but I got a stupid CRAMP on the second mile somewhere after that steep hill.

Mile 1 was fantastic! It was right around 7:30, and I felt great running with some tall guy who told me to stick with him. At the top of that hill, the cramp jabbed into me and that was the end of my ability to sprint. It was in the worst spot where I couldn’t dig my fingers into it to make it go away. I just tried to control my breathing and ignore the fact that it felt like a knife was jabbing into my right ribcage while I was attempting to sprint.

When it finally went away I was back to sprinting up the hill to the finish and redeeming the slow pace from the cramp. Unfortunately it just wasn’t enough and I was bummed when I crossed the line out of breath.

Overall time = 1:25:44

Yep, just slightly slower than last year due to the run and the swim time. But that’s okay. This was just a little practice sprint race and it’s not like I was expecting much. I mean, actually I was expecting a good run time, which was disappointing because it didn’t happen.. but I can’t really complain with all the busy crap that’s been getting in the way of my usual training. I guess back to back trips to South Carolina and Alaska might have inhibited my normal training routine leading up to this.

Now we’re looking to the future and the upcoming hectic craziness that is the back half of the 2011 Tri Season!

I’ve got zero races for the rest of my time in California. I wanted to keep it more mellow this summer because of the job and the fact that I have so many races in the Fall with Stevens and whatnot. The new addition that just recently happened was my entry into the USAT Age Group National Championship in Vermont on August 20^th! After a short-lived scare of thinking I wasn’t getting in because I was put on a waitlist, I got a confirmation email and I am now good to go for Vermont!

I’ll put up a post sometime later to highlight the upcoming NECTC Season and Age Group Nats!