Bike ride, trail
Run with Garrison, sonic loop
Surf with Jessica, San Onofre
what a beautiful day....
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Complete Day
Swim masters practice, short course 6am
Bike ride, trail
Run with Garrison, sonic loop
Surf with Jessica, San Onofre
what a beautiful day....
Bike ride, trail
Run with Garrison, sonic loop
Surf with Jessica, San Onofre
what a beautiful day....
Monday, July 19, 2010
Vineman 70.3 - My First Half
My first half ironman is in the books.
I’m writing this the day after the race on Monday afternoon. This is because after the awards ceremony last night, we only had time to shower and pack up to drive home. We needed to be home that night because my dad had to be at the airport for standby work and I had a dentist appointment to get my wisdom teeth out at 9am.
Sidenote about the wisdom teeth.. I’m in so much pain. The vicodin hardly works and I’ve been spitting up blood all freakin day. Earlier after I tried to take a nap, I found myself rolling on the bathroom floor about to throw up and sweating profusely because my body was so angry at me. I think I was swallowing too much blood while I was trying to nap and my stomach finally said enough. One of the worst experiences ever.
I am now sitting and typing this with gauze shoved in the corners of my mouth drooling blood ever 3 minutes.. not exactly how I pictured the day after my 70.3 to go, so bear with me as I try and recount the race.
Just so you're forewarned, this entry is pretty detailed and extensive. One of the results of being bound to the couch because of three less wisdom teeth the day after the race. Thanks for reading.
Alarm went off at 4:50am. My hope was that we’d leave the hotel by 530 and get to the river start by 6:30 and have an hour to prepare. Luckily it did not take that long to get to the race site and we were there and parking by 6:15. When we checked out the site yesterday the traffic was terrible. But parking was surprisingly easy for 2,000+ race participants.
This was the craziest setup I’ve ever been a part of. One of the largest contributing factors to this was the fact that the transition area was open all morning. It never closed; so people were still going in and out after the pro men and women started at 6:30. It was really hectic going in. I found my rack row and put my bike up at the end spot. Initial reaction about the area was that it was covered it gravel. And it wasn’t like tiny pebble gravel, it was rocky gravel. I saw this the previous day, but I was hoping a mile of carpet was going to suddenly appear in the morning.
With my stuff in place on a rack, I watched Chris Lieto and the pro men start swimming as I made my way to the portopotty lines. After that I found where my dad set up his stuff and went to go see how he was doing. As soon as I walked up to him, I looked at his shoes and realized I forgot something crucial… my socks. Socks?! How could I forget socks. I even decided against putting socks at T2 yesterday afternoon because I wanted to wear socks for the bike. Nooooooo. I maneuvered back to my stuff and scrounged in my bag to no avail, I knew I had forgotten them completely. So I made sure everything else was in place and set off to find my mom.
She was located in a prime spot to video the swim start. I set my bag down and said, “Mom, I’m going to ask you for something weird… I need your socks.” Without hesitation she handed them off and I couldn’t have been more relieved. I was imagining biking and running without socks and I was so glad I was going to avoid that.
The socks were in place by my shoes. Good to go. Dad’s wave was up in 8 minutes and I still had to get my wetsuit on. I put it halfway on and walked over to my Dad as he was about to walk into the water. I yelled ‘Dad!’ without thinking and about 9 men turned to look at me. ‘Jim!’ worked better, and he came over for a quick hug good luck. I’m not going to pretend that I wasn’t concerned for him. I was really hoping he was going to finish and do well! He was soon off down the river and I was doing some last minute spray body glide for the wetsuit.
There was one wave between me and my Dad. So I got in the super warm water around 7:35 and our wave was set to go off at 7:42. I was really glad it was an in-water start because I have a tendency to be tentative during a run-in start. I positioned myself at a nice spot below the line after doing a few water polo warm-up strokes. Heart rate around 110 getting antsy for the start. The countdown started and the 29 & under women were off!
The swim was mostly smooth sailing. The start of it up until we were under the bridge was a little dodgy with people not swimming in straight lines, myself included. I crisscrossed a few people. But after passing the first buoy on my left side, I eased into second place and kept ahead of the annoying girl who wanted to swim next to me. The girl in first was probably 3 body lengths ahead of me already and she was my marker every time I picked my head up to make sure I was swimming in the right direction.
At the turnaround point to start swimming downstream, we started running into different colored swim caps and passing the men ahead of us. The funniest part about this was that the river depth was probably around 3-4 feet at this point and there were a lot of guys just taking a break and standing up! Haha I was swimming by people standing. So strange.
I did get a foot cramp about 2/3 of the way through and my toes were cringing, but it disappeared after I relaxed a bit. Besides that, the only other discomfort came from within my wetsuit because the water was so warm! I was sweating on the inside. I started thinking that I shouldn’t have worn the wetsuit, but I have come to realize the importance of its ability to conserve a lot of my energy (even if it was a bit hot).
Swim time totaled 26:47. Proud to announce that as the 39th fastest time out of the 1870 finishers, men and pros included.
I finally saw the rock bottom creeping up to my face and I exited when I saw a lot of the men standing up around me. Thank goodness for the little strips of carpet leading to my bike or else my feet would’ve been torn to shreds.
Now for the sloppiest transition time I’ve ever done. 3 minutes and 14 seconds of bumbling around like an idiot. The first problem was the gravel stuck to my feet. I did bring a water bottle to rinse it off, but after messing with it for too long I finally just put the socks on with a few rocks left over on my feet and prayed I wouldn’t feel them. Not the smartest idea with 69.2 more miles of biking and running ahead of me, but I knew I was wasting so much time already that I just had to move.
On to the next time-consuming task: bagging everything up! After I was finally ready to go, I had to place my wetsuit and crap into a plastic bag and tie it up. The reason for this was that T1 closed as soon as everyone was done with the swim because it was a regular river beach area for people.
So finally with my stuff tied up by the rack, I took off running with my bike in tow. I made the decision to run up the little hill coming out of the parking lot mostly on impulse because I saw so many people failing trying to clip in and ride up the hill at the bottom. It obviously wasn’t working and I was glad I decided to run it.
Freedom of the open road! Wooo. Finally.
Now the only thing in my way was people biking slower than me and the fear of getting a penalty card. The waves ahead of me included the Women 40-44, Men 35-39, Women 35-39, Men 45-49, Women 45 +, Men 50-54, and Men 55+. Don’t ask me how putting the oldest men in the race in the wave right before me makes sense, because the entire lineup of waves made no sense. The poor 29 & Under men were placed in the dead last wave. But anyways, the race meeting the day before was all about drafting and all the penalties you could potentially receive, so all I wanted was to avoid that.
The bike was off to a good start. But about 5 minutes in, I felt two of my Gu packets fall out my back pocket. It’s my only complaint about the suit, the back pockets suck. Luckily I still had one in each leg pocket. But when it happened, I realized that I had somehow forgotten 1) my Harvest power bar and 2) the baggie of advil I had prepared. So I just had to suck up the race with no advil, and I would have to grab the powerbars at the bike aid stations. Ugghhh.
The plan was to stay around 160 watts for the first 30 min and see how it felt. It felt alright, so I tried pushing the effort a little bit. About 50 minutes into the bike, I finally realized that my power meter was giving me completely incorrect numbers for my wattage. I tried to figure out what was wrong but it wouldn’t correct itself. When I was going up hills it said I was only pushing like 115 watts; there’s no way, it was at least double that. So I automatically freaked out and got angry because I really do pay attention to the power output when I ride. I tried focusing on my watch and going off of heart rate instead. And then magically after the halfway point, the power meter decided to start working again! Thank goodness, I was lost without it.
I clicked the interval button when I realized it was working again. So for the first 90 minutes of the bike, I only averaged 115 watts and 20.1 mph. For the second 80 minutes of the bike I averaged 19.9 mph at an average of 160 watts. Clearly it broke on me for an hour in the beginning.. frustrating that I don’t have that data now.
But overall, the bike was so much fun. I couldn’t have imagined a better bike course to epitomize wine country California. We went by so many vineyards and millions of grapes. I grabbed water bottles at ever aid station to fill up my aero drink. I grabbed half a powerbar at aid station 2 and 3. I wish I had remembered my bar, but I made do. I think I ate the Gu packets at the hour and two hour mark, but I don’t remember for sure. Coming down to the last 4 miles or so I ate the packet of Sport Beans that I had in my back pocket
All in all, the most memorable bike course.. just ahead of Lobsterman.
Bike time totaled 2:47:47.
477th out of all the1870 amateurs there!
Rounding the corner to head into the high school was really cool because the place was filled with people cheering. Only sucky part was the long stretch of concrete I had to run on with the bike shoes on. I didn’t want to take them off at the end of the bike because I still haven’t practiced that at all.
So there I was, clopping down the road and finally onto the grass field. I remembered I was row 12 and found my spot quickly. Threw my bike up and counted about 6 other bikes on the 29 & under racks. This transition was much smoother than the last. Well, except for the fact that I got to the run exit point and somehow missed it and ran to the wrong corner before someone noticed my stupidity and yelled at me to go the other way (thank you to that person).
I stopped my HR watch at this point and saved the data. I didn’t do that after the swim, so the total time on the watch was the bike and the swim. It was 3 hours 20 minutes and an average heart rate of 167.
T2 totaled at 2:34.
And all that now lay ahead of me was a Half Marathon. It was just a simple 13.1 miles of running. Pft, nothing. At least that’s what I was attempting to tell myself..
The first two miles felt awesome. I glanced at my watch and saw 17 minutes at the two-mile marker. I was totally fine with 8:30 per mile. And then it was around a corner after the 3rd aid station when we started going up this short steep hill when my legs said no. All they wanted was to be done after 5 km.
But shortly after that I started recognizing where I was. Yesterday during my 30 minute warm-up bike ride, I rode around the airport and this was the exact road I was on! Familiarity on my side, I just trekked on.
The halfway point was so awesome. It was on the property of La Crema Winery http://www.lacrema.com/regions/rrv.html and they had music blaring for the athletes. We ran around two tiny ponds and stomped on the halfway timing pad to head home. The tunnel of mist was really nice and refreshing. In my head, my plan was to pick up the pace for the back half if I could. I tried and failed miserably. The muscle located next to my shin on the front of my left leg started seizing up at one point and I stopped and stretched. It was the only time I stopped to stretch. And like most Olympic races that I do, my inner quads started to twinge and yell at me.
I finally saw my dad pass by me going the other direction after the mile 9 aid station. That means he had about 8 miles go to. I was just glad I saw him.
Another note about this part of the course, it was blazing hot. Like 90 degrees hot. So everyone was in pain and heating up.
Now decisions decisions.. I really had to pee. . I knew this was going to set me back because via my watch, I had to run 9 minute miles for the last 2 miles to get home under 2 hours (goal). So at the mile 10 aid station I ran into a portopotty and peed as fast as possible.
I came out and grabbed a cup of ice to pour down my back and water to drink. However, I still hadn’t zipped up the front of my suit and when I poured the ice down my back, it just fell down all the way and collected at my crotch. Yep, I had ice just hanging out down there and there was nothing I could do but wait til it melted haha. When it finally did I kicked up the pace to get home. The last mile was tough because it felt so close, yet so far away. When I finally realized I wasn’t making the 2 hour mark, I just eased the last stretch home and tried to look good for the pictures. Because that’s really all that matters right? ; )
Run time totaled 2:03.15
Coming through the finish area was annoying. I had voiced my concerns before that our Stevens suits looked like Stanford’s big S and that people would think I was on Stanford’s tri team. But I was just shrugged off like it didn’t matter because we were in the NECTC and people would know. Well of course it happened. I believe I heard “Go Stanford!” or any of a variation of that encouragement about 20 times throughout the day. I even heard a couple snide “Go Bears!” comments in opposition to the supposed Stanford team I was racing for. And finally, coming through the finish, the two announcers calling out all the finishers went into a whole shpeel about how I was racing for Stanford. After seeing the S on my suit, “Is this a Stanford? Look how smart she is.” I believe one of them even said, “She had her nutritional thing calculated out on some mathematical paradigm… Amanda Newman!” Ugh. I always feel like people who don’t get my last name correct when they see it are idiots first of all, so to each his own. I guess coming into that run shute I just wished my suit said STEVENS somewhere on it.
I completed my first Half Ironman!! Hooray!!! What a success. They grabbed my timing chip and I posed for a quick backdrop picture with my finisher medal.
As I started walking to find water, a wave of emotion swept over me and I had to hold myself back from crying. What the.. why did I feel the need to cry? Looking back on it, lame. But in the moment, I was just so damn happy to be done. My dad had signed us up 8 months ago on Halloween night of 2009. I had spent all summer thus far training and thinking about finishing this 70.3 and it was finally over. Phew.
Final Time = 5:23:38
After downing way too much water, I found where my mother was waiting near the finish line and laid down on the grass behind her.
Coincidentally, the guy standing next to her was the mechanic who used to work at Ladera Cyclery, where I bought my first road bike. I don’t think he’d remember me, so I didn’t say anything. He just looked like Matthew Fox, that’s the only reason why I remembered him.
After waiting around for about an hour, here came Dad! He did it!!
So proud of him!!! He just strolled into the finish like it was nothing. But when we got to him, he was obviously dead. He said he was overheating and he needed shade. So my mom went to go find shade with him and I went to go get water bottles. He looked better now that he was sitting down. I went back to get food and in front of me was the best post-race spread of fruit I’ve ever seen. Peaches, nectarines, plums, oranges, cantaloupe, watermelon.. the list goes on. The lady next to me commented that this was ten times better than the Wildflower spread, so I was just appreciative of the hospitality.
After consuming the fruit, the three of us moved out of the shade. Mom took some pictures and then we went to find our plastic T1 bags that they had brought back for us. I found my row of numbers and then I saw my half empty bag.. oh no. No wetsuit. Nooooo, I didn’t tie it tight enough! I quickly hustled to the pile of unclaimed stuff that had just fallen out of the bags. Thank goodness I spotted my wetsuit right away. I lost the goggles for good, but that didn’t matter. I only cared about the wetsuit.
Then we went to the T2 area and got all of our stuff ready to go while Mom got the car.
We peaked at the results board and saw that I was 2nd in my age group, so we had to wait until 4:30 for the awards ceremony inside the gym. Waiting around just lying in the grass was cake.
Best awards at a race ever! Top 3 in each age group won a bottle of wine from La Crema (the winery we ran through during run)! For second place, I got a 2007 white chardonnay inside of the award box with the age group title on the front. I also got an envelope with a letter from Avia that I won a free pair of shoes that I just had to mail in for. But wait! That’s not all. The girl who won had already qualified for Kona, so the 70.3 Championship Clearwater spot was bumped down to me. I had to kindly decline because November is the middle of my swim season at Stevens. It really sucked, but at least I can say I qualified!
Also ended up 59th out of the 611 amateur females at the race!! There were some fast older women there, sheesh.
We skedaddled out of there after my age group because we needed to head home like I mentioned in the beginning. The hotel gave us a day rate for just showering before we left. That was nice of them.
Homeward bound!
The way I see it, I probably burned enough calories to feed an African child for a week during this race; so I was eating whatever I wanted for dinner. Thank goodness for the google maps on my iphone because I found a Panda Express with a Yogurtland right next door off the freeway we were on about an hour into the drive. Orange chicken and frozen yogurt never tasted so good : )
Solid day.
I’m writing this the day after the race on Monday afternoon. This is because after the awards ceremony last night, we only had time to shower and pack up to drive home. We needed to be home that night because my dad had to be at the airport for standby work and I had a dentist appointment to get my wisdom teeth out at 9am.
Sidenote about the wisdom teeth.. I’m in so much pain. The vicodin hardly works and I’ve been spitting up blood all freakin day. Earlier after I tried to take a nap, I found myself rolling on the bathroom floor about to throw up and sweating profusely because my body was so angry at me. I think I was swallowing too much blood while I was trying to nap and my stomach finally said enough. One of the worst experiences ever.
I am now sitting and typing this with gauze shoved in the corners of my mouth drooling blood ever 3 minutes.. not exactly how I pictured the day after my 70.3 to go, so bear with me as I try and recount the race.
Just so you're forewarned, this entry is pretty detailed and extensive. One of the results of being bound to the couch because of three less wisdom teeth the day after the race. Thanks for reading.
Wakeup
Alarm went off at 4:50am. My hope was that we’d leave the hotel by 530 and get to the river start by 6:30 and have an hour to prepare. Luckily it did not take that long to get to the race site and we were there and parking by 6:15. When we checked out the site yesterday the traffic was terrible. But parking was surprisingly easy for 2,000+ race participants.
Setup
This was the craziest setup I’ve ever been a part of. One of the largest contributing factors to this was the fact that the transition area was open all morning. It never closed; so people were still going in and out after the pro men and women started at 6:30. It was really hectic going in. I found my rack row and put my bike up at the end spot. Initial reaction about the area was that it was covered it gravel. And it wasn’t like tiny pebble gravel, it was rocky gravel. I saw this the previous day, but I was hoping a mile of carpet was going to suddenly appear in the morning.
With my stuff in place on a rack, I watched Chris Lieto and the pro men start swimming as I made my way to the portopotty lines. After that I found where my dad set up his stuff and went to go see how he was doing. As soon as I walked up to him, I looked at his shoes and realized I forgot something crucial… my socks. Socks?! How could I forget socks. I even decided against putting socks at T2 yesterday afternoon because I wanted to wear socks for the bike. Nooooooo. I maneuvered back to my stuff and scrounged in my bag to no avail, I knew I had forgotten them completely. So I made sure everything else was in place and set off to find my mom.
She was located in a prime spot to video the swim start. I set my bag down and said, “Mom, I’m going to ask you for something weird… I need your socks.” Without hesitation she handed them off and I couldn’t have been more relieved. I was imagining biking and running without socks and I was so glad I was going to avoid that.
Wetsuit
The socks were in place by my shoes. Good to go. Dad’s wave was up in 8 minutes and I still had to get my wetsuit on. I put it halfway on and walked over to my Dad as he was about to walk into the water. I yelled ‘Dad!’ without thinking and about 9 men turned to look at me. ‘Jim!’ worked better, and he came over for a quick hug good luck. I’m not going to pretend that I wasn’t concerned for him. I was really hoping he was going to finish and do well! He was soon off down the river and I was doing some last minute spray body glide for the wetsuit.
Race start
There was one wave between me and my Dad. So I got in the super warm water around 7:35 and our wave was set to go off at 7:42. I was really glad it was an in-water start because I have a tendency to be tentative during a run-in start. I positioned myself at a nice spot below the line after doing a few water polo warm-up strokes. Heart rate around 110 getting antsy for the start. The countdown started and the 29 & under women were off!
Swim
The swim was mostly smooth sailing. The start of it up until we were under the bridge was a little dodgy with people not swimming in straight lines, myself included. I crisscrossed a few people. But after passing the first buoy on my left side, I eased into second place and kept ahead of the annoying girl who wanted to swim next to me. The girl in first was probably 3 body lengths ahead of me already and she was my marker every time I picked my head up to make sure I was swimming in the right direction.
At the turnaround point to start swimming downstream, we started running into different colored swim caps and passing the men ahead of us. The funniest part about this was that the river depth was probably around 3-4 feet at this point and there were a lot of guys just taking a break and standing up! Haha I was swimming by people standing. So strange.
I did get a foot cramp about 2/3 of the way through and my toes were cringing, but it disappeared after I relaxed a bit. Besides that, the only other discomfort came from within my wetsuit because the water was so warm! I was sweating on the inside. I started thinking that I shouldn’t have worn the wetsuit, but I have come to realize the importance of its ability to conserve a lot of my energy (even if it was a bit hot).
Swim time totaled 26:47. Proud to announce that as the 39th fastest time out of the 1870 finishers, men and pros included.
Exit
I finally saw the rock bottom creeping up to my face and I exited when I saw a lot of the men standing up around me. Thank goodness for the little strips of carpet leading to my bike or else my feet would’ve been torn to shreds.
T1
Now for the sloppiest transition time I’ve ever done. 3 minutes and 14 seconds of bumbling around like an idiot. The first problem was the gravel stuck to my feet. I did bring a water bottle to rinse it off, but after messing with it for too long I finally just put the socks on with a few rocks left over on my feet and prayed I wouldn’t feel them. Not the smartest idea with 69.2 more miles of biking and running ahead of me, but I knew I was wasting so much time already that I just had to move.
On to the next time-consuming task: bagging everything up! After I was finally ready to go, I had to place my wetsuit and crap into a plastic bag and tie it up. The reason for this was that T1 closed as soon as everyone was done with the swim because it was a regular river beach area for people.
So finally with my stuff tied up by the rack, I took off running with my bike in tow. I made the decision to run up the little hill coming out of the parking lot mostly on impulse because I saw so many people failing trying to clip in and ride up the hill at the bottom. It obviously wasn’t working and I was glad I decided to run it.
Bike
Freedom of the open road! Wooo. Finally.
Now the only thing in my way was people biking slower than me and the fear of getting a penalty card. The waves ahead of me included the Women 40-44, Men 35-39, Women 35-39, Men 45-49, Women 45 +, Men 50-54, and Men 55+. Don’t ask me how putting the oldest men in the race in the wave right before me makes sense, because the entire lineup of waves made no sense. The poor 29 & Under men were placed in the dead last wave. But anyways, the race meeting the day before was all about drafting and all the penalties you could potentially receive, so all I wanted was to avoid that.
The bike was off to a good start. But about 5 minutes in, I felt two of my Gu packets fall out my back pocket. It’s my only complaint about the suit, the back pockets suck. Luckily I still had one in each leg pocket. But when it happened, I realized that I had somehow forgotten 1) my Harvest power bar and 2) the baggie of advil I had prepared. So I just had to suck up the race with no advil, and I would have to grab the powerbars at the bike aid stations. Ugghhh.
The plan was to stay around 160 watts for the first 30 min and see how it felt. It felt alright, so I tried pushing the effort a little bit. About 50 minutes into the bike, I finally realized that my power meter was giving me completely incorrect numbers for my wattage. I tried to figure out what was wrong but it wouldn’t correct itself. When I was going up hills it said I was only pushing like 115 watts; there’s no way, it was at least double that. So I automatically freaked out and got angry because I really do pay attention to the power output when I ride. I tried focusing on my watch and going off of heart rate instead. And then magically after the halfway point, the power meter decided to start working again! Thank goodness, I was lost without it.
I clicked the interval button when I realized it was working again. So for the first 90 minutes of the bike, I only averaged 115 watts and 20.1 mph. For the second 80 minutes of the bike I averaged 19.9 mph at an average of 160 watts. Clearly it broke on me for an hour in the beginning.. frustrating that I don’t have that data now.
But overall, the bike was so much fun. I couldn’t have imagined a better bike course to epitomize wine country California. We went by so many vineyards and millions of grapes. I grabbed water bottles at ever aid station to fill up my aero drink. I grabbed half a powerbar at aid station 2 and 3. I wish I had remembered my bar, but I made do. I think I ate the Gu packets at the hour and two hour mark, but I don’t remember for sure. Coming down to the last 4 miles or so I ate the packet of Sport Beans that I had in my back pocket
All in all, the most memorable bike course.. just ahead of Lobsterman.
Bike time totaled 2:47:47.
477th out of all the1870 amateurs there!
T2
Rounding the corner to head into the high school was really cool because the place was filled with people cheering. Only sucky part was the long stretch of concrete I had to run on with the bike shoes on. I didn’t want to take them off at the end of the bike because I still haven’t practiced that at all.
So there I was, clopping down the road and finally onto the grass field. I remembered I was row 12 and found my spot quickly. Threw my bike up and counted about 6 other bikes on the 29 & under racks. This transition was much smoother than the last. Well, except for the fact that I got to the run exit point and somehow missed it and ran to the wrong corner before someone noticed my stupidity and yelled at me to go the other way (thank you to that person).
I stopped my HR watch at this point and saved the data. I didn’t do that after the swim, so the total time on the watch was the bike and the swim. It was 3 hours 20 minutes and an average heart rate of 167.
T2 totaled at 2:34.
Run
And all that now lay ahead of me was a Half Marathon. It was just a simple 13.1 miles of running. Pft, nothing. At least that’s what I was attempting to tell myself..
The first two miles felt awesome. I glanced at my watch and saw 17 minutes at the two-mile marker. I was totally fine with 8:30 per mile. And then it was around a corner after the 3rd aid station when we started going up this short steep hill when my legs said no. All they wanted was to be done after 5 km.
But shortly after that I started recognizing where I was. Yesterday during my 30 minute warm-up bike ride, I rode around the airport and this was the exact road I was on! Familiarity on my side, I just trekked on.
The halfway point was so awesome. It was on the property of La Crema Winery http://www.lacrema.com/regions/rrv.html and they had music blaring for the athletes. We ran around two tiny ponds and stomped on the halfway timing pad to head home. The tunnel of mist was really nice and refreshing. In my head, my plan was to pick up the pace for the back half if I could. I tried and failed miserably. The muscle located next to my shin on the front of my left leg started seizing up at one point and I stopped and stretched. It was the only time I stopped to stretch. And like most Olympic races that I do, my inner quads started to twinge and yell at me.
I finally saw my dad pass by me going the other direction after the mile 9 aid station. That means he had about 8 miles go to. I was just glad I saw him.
Another note about this part of the course, it was blazing hot. Like 90 degrees hot. So everyone was in pain and heating up.
Now decisions decisions.. I really had to pee. . I knew this was going to set me back because via my watch, I had to run 9 minute miles for the last 2 miles to get home under 2 hours (goal). So at the mile 10 aid station I ran into a portopotty and peed as fast as possible.
I came out and grabbed a cup of ice to pour down my back and water to drink. However, I still hadn’t zipped up the front of my suit and when I poured the ice down my back, it just fell down all the way and collected at my crotch. Yep, I had ice just hanging out down there and there was nothing I could do but wait til it melted haha. When it finally did I kicked up the pace to get home. The last mile was tough because it felt so close, yet so far away. When I finally realized I wasn’t making the 2 hour mark, I just eased the last stretch home and tried to look good for the pictures. Because that’s really all that matters right? ; )
Run time totaled 2:03.15
Finish
Coming through the finish area was annoying. I had voiced my concerns before that our Stevens suits looked like Stanford’s big S and that people would think I was on Stanford’s tri team. But I was just shrugged off like it didn’t matter because we were in the NECTC and people would know. Well of course it happened. I believe I heard “Go Stanford!” or any of a variation of that encouragement about 20 times throughout the day. I even heard a couple snide “Go Bears!” comments in opposition to the supposed Stanford team I was racing for. And finally, coming through the finish, the two announcers calling out all the finishers went into a whole shpeel about how I was racing for Stanford. After seeing the S on my suit, “Is this a Stanford? Look how smart she is.” I believe one of them even said, “She had her nutritional thing calculated out on some mathematical paradigm… Amanda Newman!” Ugh. I always feel like people who don’t get my last name correct when they see it are idiots first of all, so to each his own. I guess coming into that run shute I just wished my suit said STEVENS somewhere on it.
I completed my first Half Ironman!! Hooray!!! What a success. They grabbed my timing chip and I posed for a quick backdrop picture with my finisher medal.
As I started walking to find water, a wave of emotion swept over me and I had to hold myself back from crying. What the.. why did I feel the need to cry? Looking back on it, lame. But in the moment, I was just so damn happy to be done. My dad had signed us up 8 months ago on Halloween night of 2009. I had spent all summer thus far training and thinking about finishing this 70.3 and it was finally over. Phew.
Final Time = 5:23:38
Post-Race
After downing way too much water, I found where my mother was waiting near the finish line and laid down on the grass behind her.
Coincidentally, the guy standing next to her was the mechanic who used to work at Ladera Cyclery, where I bought my first road bike. I don’t think he’d remember me, so I didn’t say anything. He just looked like Matthew Fox, that’s the only reason why I remembered him.
After waiting around for about an hour, here came Dad! He did it!!
So proud of him!!! He just strolled into the finish like it was nothing. But when we got to him, he was obviously dead. He said he was overheating and he needed shade. So my mom went to go find shade with him and I went to go get water bottles. He looked better now that he was sitting down. I went back to get food and in front of me was the best post-race spread of fruit I’ve ever seen. Peaches, nectarines, plums, oranges, cantaloupe, watermelon.. the list goes on. The lady next to me commented that this was ten times better than the Wildflower spread, so I was just appreciative of the hospitality.
After consuming the fruit, the three of us moved out of the shade. Mom took some pictures and then we went to find our plastic T1 bags that they had brought back for us. I found my row of numbers and then I saw my half empty bag.. oh no. No wetsuit. Nooooo, I didn’t tie it tight enough! I quickly hustled to the pile of unclaimed stuff that had just fallen out of the bags. Thank goodness I spotted my wetsuit right away. I lost the goggles for good, but that didn’t matter. I only cared about the wetsuit.
Then we went to the T2 area and got all of our stuff ready to go while Mom got the car.
Awards
We peaked at the results board and saw that I was 2nd in my age group, so we had to wait until 4:30 for the awards ceremony inside the gym. Waiting around just lying in the grass was cake.
Best awards at a race ever! Top 3 in each age group won a bottle of wine from La Crema (the winery we ran through during run)! For second place, I got a 2007 white chardonnay inside of the award box with the age group title on the front. I also got an envelope with a letter from Avia that I won a free pair of shoes that I just had to mail in for. But wait! That’s not all. The girl who won had already qualified for Kona, so the 70.3 Championship Clearwater spot was bumped down to me. I had to kindly decline because November is the middle of my swim season at Stevens. It really sucked, but at least I can say I qualified!
Also ended up 59th out of the 611 amateur females at the race!! There were some fast older women there, sheesh.
We skedaddled out of there after my age group because we needed to head home like I mentioned in the beginning. The hotel gave us a day rate for just showering before we left. That was nice of them.
Homeward bound!
The way I see it, I probably burned enough calories to feed an African child for a week during this race; so I was eating whatever I wanted for dinner. Thank goodness for the google maps on my iphone because I found a Panda Express with a Yogurtland right next door off the freeway we were on about an hour into the drive. Orange chicken and frozen yogurt never tasted so good : )
Solid day.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
1 Day to Vineman
Less than 10 hours to the race.
I'm on my computer with The Replacements playing next to the firefox program opened up to this blog and facebook.
The Replacements is by far my favorite sports movie ever created. Best rootin-for-the-underdog film. Thus, I’m playing it before the race. Garrison and I used to watch this film about every morning for a couple summers a few years back. He and I can mouth this movie word for word. Swear.
The “wide mouth bass” scene just came on : ) haha
Anywho. I’m beating around the bush.
Yesterday we (Mom, Dad and I) left the house around noon. We dropped the dog off and got gas, then we were on our way.
After about 7 and a half hours of driving, Santa Rosa appeared in the distance. Nice little driving tour of CA on our way up here. We checked in and got food at this place I found on my iphone gps. It was called Johnny Garlic’s and it was stellar. All I wanted was pasta and I was satisfied; so the chicken parm was heaven.
Bedtime at the Hilton Garden Inn.
Breakfast was surprisingly thorough.
Around 11:30 we went to the Windsor High School where the Race Expo was taking place. It was our check-in time for last names M-Z. It took some time, but we finally got all our crap and fancy t-shits. Then at 12:30pm we listened to the prerace talk. Everything about the talk was just about penalties and how not to get them. Basically, don’t draft, leave 7 meters between bikes, pass on the left, and you’re good to go. Understandable. As long as the course doesn’t get crowded I’ll be alright.
We went through all the bad traffic to get to the swim start. The river’s going to be 4-7 meters in depth during the entire portion of the swim. When we saw where the place was it was crazy. It was like a pretend beach with a bunch of mountain people all hanging out. I can’t even describe it.. Just not my type of people. Then, we drove all 56 miles of the bike course. And no bueno, all three of us were getting tired just driving it haha. It is absolutely beautiful and we drove by about 1000 vineyards.. so tomorrow’s going to be fun. We didn’t drive the run course, I didn’t want to psyche myself out. I know 13.1 miles is long, that’s all I need to know.
Next up, half hour bike ride warm-up. I rode around the airport, it was actually really awesome. Then I threw on the shoes and did an 18 minute easy run around the industrial business district near the hotel. Everything felt peachy. I know I feel physically ready.
As soon as I rode, I realized that I forgot something for my bike. I had set up the aerodrink with my dad before we left. But guess what I forgot? The straw. The straw and the yellow thingy that prevents splashing. Damnit.
After a quick shower we went back to Windsor High School and set up our Transition 2 stuff. Just shoes and stuff for the run portion. I decided against the fuel belt because there are aid stations every mile on the course.
Sigh of relief. All I needed now was food and rest and I was good to go. Well and I needed a straw. So I stopped at CVS and got lucky finding a thick plastic straw. We picked up a couple bagels for the morning at the market next door and then went to Applebee’s for dinner. I’m pretty sure we hadn’t been to that restaurant in foreverrrr before tonight. But I got a nice hearty place of whole wheat pasta with a bit of chicken and cream sauce. Good fuel, at least I hope.
Now I’m back in the hotel, and updating this blog instead of focusing on the first 2/3 of the race tomorrow. I still need to make sure I have all the food and stuff I need for the bike. I talked to Marc about nutrition stuff for like 2 minutes before it just got me upset. I know I need to drink. I know I need to eat. But I just don’t like thinking about the race. I know I should think about it, but I just want it to happen and not psyche myself out. Ugh. Let’s just get this over with. I signed up like 8 months ago for this thing and I’ve been training hardcore since I’ve been home. Let’s doooooooooo it.
Wish me luck!!!!
I'm on my computer with The Replacements playing next to the firefox program opened up to this blog and facebook.
The Replacements is by far my favorite sports movie ever created. Best rootin-for-the-underdog film. Thus, I’m playing it before the race. Garrison and I used to watch this film about every morning for a couple summers a few years back. He and I can mouth this movie word for word. Swear.
The “wide mouth bass” scene just came on : ) haha
Anywho. I’m beating around the bush.
Yesterday we (Mom, Dad and I) left the house around noon. We dropped the dog off and got gas, then we were on our way.
After about 7 and a half hours of driving, Santa Rosa appeared in the distance. Nice little driving tour of CA on our way up here. We checked in and got food at this place I found on my iphone gps. It was called Johnny Garlic’s and it was stellar. All I wanted was pasta and I was satisfied; so the chicken parm was heaven.
Bedtime at the Hilton Garden Inn.
Breakfast was surprisingly thorough.
Around 11:30 we went to the Windsor High School where the Race Expo was taking place. It was our check-in time for last names M-Z. It took some time, but we finally got all our crap and fancy t-shits. Then at 12:30pm we listened to the prerace talk. Everything about the talk was just about penalties and how not to get them. Basically, don’t draft, leave 7 meters between bikes, pass on the left, and you’re good to go. Understandable. As long as the course doesn’t get crowded I’ll be alright.
We went through all the bad traffic to get to the swim start. The river’s going to be 4-7 meters in depth during the entire portion of the swim. When we saw where the place was it was crazy. It was like a pretend beach with a bunch of mountain people all hanging out. I can’t even describe it.. Just not my type of people. Then, we drove all 56 miles of the bike course. And no bueno, all three of us were getting tired just driving it haha. It is absolutely beautiful and we drove by about 1000 vineyards.. so tomorrow’s going to be fun. We didn’t drive the run course, I didn’t want to psyche myself out. I know 13.1 miles is long, that’s all I need to know.
Next up, half hour bike ride warm-up. I rode around the airport, it was actually really awesome. Then I threw on the shoes and did an 18 minute easy run around the industrial business district near the hotel. Everything felt peachy. I know I feel physically ready.
As soon as I rode, I realized that I forgot something for my bike. I had set up the aerodrink with my dad before we left. But guess what I forgot? The straw. The straw and the yellow thingy that prevents splashing. Damnit.
After a quick shower we went back to Windsor High School and set up our Transition 2 stuff. Just shoes and stuff for the run portion. I decided against the fuel belt because there are aid stations every mile on the course.
Sigh of relief. All I needed now was food and rest and I was good to go. Well and I needed a straw. So I stopped at CVS and got lucky finding a thick plastic straw. We picked up a couple bagels for the morning at the market next door and then went to Applebee’s for dinner. I’m pretty sure we hadn’t been to that restaurant in foreverrrr before tonight. But I got a nice hearty place of whole wheat pasta with a bit of chicken and cream sauce. Good fuel, at least I hope.
Now I’m back in the hotel, and updating this blog instead of focusing on the first 2/3 of the race tomorrow. I still need to make sure I have all the food and stuff I need for the bike. I talked to Marc about nutrition stuff for like 2 minutes before it just got me upset. I know I need to drink. I know I need to eat. But I just don’t like thinking about the race. I know I should think about it, but I just want it to happen and not psyche myself out. Ugh. Let’s just get this over with. I signed up like 8 months ago for this thing and I’ve been training hardcore since I’ve been home. Let’s doooooooooo it.
Wish me luck!!!!
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Carlsbad Sprint Triathlon 2010
3rd Time's a Charm!
This is my third year in a row doing this race. Boy time flies. Three years ago it was my initiation into the whole wide world of triathlons. And I feel like I’ve improved leaps and bounds, so I’m pretty excited about that.
Yesterday was packet pickup. And we drove all the way down to Carlsbad only to find out that my Dad had paid for race-day pickup hah. Woops. Not only did he forget that, he also forgot that he signed Garrison up for the race. Woops again.
Well Dad already knew he couldn’t do the race because he got assigned a flight leaving early in the morning, and already knowing that he has to call in sick for next week’s race, he didn’t want to chance the suspicion. Garrison on the other hand, had made a comment that he would have liked to do the race a couple days ago. However, he wasn’t “mentally prepared” and declined to do the race. Lame. So it was all up to me to represent the Naumans this morning.
Well let’s go step by step again through the race. Why not? If you’re reading this, you must care at least a little bit what happened to me this morning…
Wakeup
Woke up at 4:30am, aiming to leave the house by 5:15. This time it was just me and my madre. Loaded up the bike and all the necessary crap. Made my bagel, grabbed a handful of blueberries, and made a cup of tea. Then, after suddenly realizing I had forgotten to grab my goggles as soon as we started the car, I ran back into the house before we headed off to San Diego.
Setup
Supposedly the transition area was to open at 6:00am. We showed up around 6:10am and there was a line starting down PCH of people waiting to get into transition. It wasn’t open yet. Okay, probably a little delay, no worries. Well about 25 minutes later they finally opened it up.
All the comments going around the triathletes was that the race was being run by the “City of Carlsbad” this year, as opposed to “Spectrum Sports” company that had ran it in the past. Therefore, we were all prepared for a bad government-run race. And don’t worry, there are more signs to come of the inadequacies of the race compared to previous years.
Everyone rushed in for an hour-ish of setup. I got a good spot because I was the second person to pick a place on my rack. I saw one other guy who had the same bike as me, that was cool. After everything was in place and I was body-marked, I made my way up the hill to sit with my mom for a while and tinker around with the camera.
Wetsuit
Now it was nearing 7:30am, so I walked back down to transition to make sure that my stuff didn’t get moved. Well, on the way down I started shuffling my feet down the hill quickly in anticipation. To my huge surprise, I did a flying leap as the front edge of my sandal hit a bump in the hill and I tumbled into the asphalt ground. 3 triathletes jumped to my aid. But in complete embarrassment, I just straightened up and kind of limped downhill yelling I was ok. After a last look at transition, my stuff was good, and I went back up to my mom and put on the wetsuit.
Great discovery of the day, I can finally put on my wetsuit without aid. It’s something that should seem simple. But my wetsuit has a “reverse zipper.” It zips down instead of up, and it hooks at the top. Usually I’ve had people help me hook it, the funniest of whom was Aaron Williams in Lubbock approximately 5 minutes before my wave start while I was freaking out. So yeah, success at the reverse zipper for the first time!
Race start
Well, back to the comment earlier about the “City of Carlsbad” running the tour.. the start was terrible. They were yelling at people for being in the water when the first wave was about to go off. Um, I’m pretty sure we all know how to not get in their way. Come on. And then they didn’t even do a countdown for the 5 minutes between waves. They just yelled, Go! It took me so off guard that I was just annoyed when they yelled it. Also, I was 30 minutes behind the first wave. And, to top it off, the wave in front of us were the Clydesdale men. That makes sense.
Swim
Smooth glassy water just like the past two years. Really nice conditions. The water was pretty cold though. Luckily, this was my first year wearing a wetsuit and it really helped. The first year I won the swim without a wetsuit. But the competition has gone up the past two years and the wetsuit played to my advantage today. I was with a girl for a majority of the beginning of the race. I passed her about halfway when she started tapering off. There was some other girl way out in front from the beginning, but I didn’t feel like sprinting the swim. Later found out my hr avg was only 119 for the swim, hah.
Exit
After I finally got around that 2nd place girl, the rest of the swim was cake. However, coming into the beach, the girl caught this perfect wave and surfed right on by me to run up to the timing pad right ahead of me. Annoying. Just bad luck for me. But we both know I outswam her. Pft.
T1
Like always, it takes me a few extra seconds to take off the legs of my wetsuit. I need to figure out why haha it’s always so annoying. At least I didn’t sit down and fix it like I did in Lubbock. Put my shoes on and ran to the mount line.
Bike
Unlike the Redondo beach race, I remembered to put my bike in a low gear for the uphill climb. I floated up the hill and started pumping over 200 watts to get moving. I saw the girl right ahead of me and I surprised myself by passing her so quickly. Clearly I was going to have a biking advantage. Passing guys is so motivating. However, it is humiliating for some men.. and some of them can’t stand seeing a girl pass them. I have heard the term is coined getting “chicked.”
One guy was so annoyed that he would pass me. I would pass him. He would pass me. Get over it bud. He did. And then he started drafting some guy. So I yelled at him to stop drafting. Hah. Never saw him again, sucka.
The funny thing about the bike was that I was so focused that I didn’t even know that I passed the lead woman. I was just going, and I thought she was way ahead of me somewhere. But I felt awesome, and I was really moving, so I concentrated on getting to the finish.
T2
I dismounted with my shoes on. I didn’t want to chance taking off my shoes going down that steep hill. Next time I do a sprint, I’m not wearing socks for the run. I took way too much time putting those on. Grabbed the belt and off I went.
I saw the girl who ousted me on the swim coming down the hill as I started the run. Psh, catch me if you can.
Run
Well during the bike, I noticed that my heart rate was constantly in the 180s. Afterwards, it was recorded at 186 average according to my watch. That’s a bit high. Clearly I was sprinting. Now for the run, I know that pushing it is in the 180s. Well, I was in the high 180s and low 190s kicking as high a cadence as possible. I was killing myself, but I wanted to keep the lead more than anything. At the end of it, my hr avg was 190 for the entire run portion : O
Ultimately, the high heart rate was gnawing at me. And although I wasn’t fading, the previous leader girl I passed on the bike was closing in on me. I saw her at the last turn around to the finish.
Ugh, so tough. As she passed me, I tried sprinting to keep up with her. Couldn’t. Even if I hadn’t biked 22+mph on that bike, I probably wouldn’t have been able to keep up with her the way she was running.
Always makes me want to be a better runner, I just don’t know how to do it yet. Hoping it’ll come to me someday, magically. For now, I’ll just stare at the sky while I run and focus on a high cadence and good form.
Finish
Finito! It was over, and my lungs were saying thank goodness. I had to sit down afterwards. It was probably the hardest I’ve ever tried in a triathlon. Especially because I think I could only muster a smile for one of the cameras.. that’s always a bad sign that I’m dying haha.
Results here: http://www.y-events.com/10cbadf.htm
2008 = 1:41.04 & 78th overall female
2009 = 1:27.30 & 28th overall female
2010 = 1:22.48 & 3rd overall female
I don’t have official split times as I’m writing this yet. But I do think a majority of my time drop this year came in my bike split.
The final complaint about the way the race was managed came during the awards presentation. They only gave an award to the top overall female finisher, who happened to be an elite girl. Then they mentioned the second and third place elite women.. not even a nod to the fact that the girl Christina and I had beat both of them in the overall time for overall 2nd and 3rd place. Redondo had the awards presentation down to a science. This just wasn’t showing any respect for the top finishers in my opinion. And finally, they had the race ages incorrect. Last year it displayed that I was 20 and the girl Christina was 24. Thus, shouldn’t I be 21 and she be 25 this year? I think so. Meaning, she won her 25-29 age group and I won my 20-24 age group? Bah, how hard is it to follow the USAT age group rules. I emailed the y-events contact email to ask them.
Give me a race to run and I’ll handle it better than these guys any day.
Now, considering I was only 6 days tapered for this race in the middle of my taper for the Vineman, I’m pretty satisfied : )
Also, highlight of the day… beating 3 out of the 4 pro women at the race! Yeahhhhhhh
Sunday, July 4, 2010
2 Weeks to My First Half
4 july 2010
Happy Independence Day!
There are 2 more weeks until my first Half Ironman.
I have been training my butt off. Pretty much like it’s my job, because it is this summer.
So now that I’m starting taper, I thought I’d make some updates on how my hard weeks played out.
6/7/2010
The week of the Redondo Sprint race I did 13:18 hours of training. It was a bit lower to rest up for the nice little sprint fun.
6/14/2020
The week of Father’s Day totaled 18 hours.
Long bike on Tuesday was about 3 hours long. I took the road bike out and just explored a new area and went down a new bike trail, Peter’s Canyon Mountain to Sea Trail. I only went partway down it because it branches off and you have to catch back up to it after taking side streets and I didn’t know where to go.
Long run was about 1:45.
6/21/2010
This week bumped up to a little over 19 hours.
Long bike turned into a long and HARD bike.. much to my dismay. I had to find a 90 minute stretch of road or trail where I never had to stop for a stop light. I thought it was impossible. And after arguing with Marc for a while, I finally decided to look up the Santa Ana River Trail that I had ridden with my dad last year. And surprisingly enough there is a 30 mile stretch of road with no stops. I had a venue, now I just needed the motivation to ride hard by myself for an hour and a half.
Well I did it and the entire thing was 70 miles in 4:06. And I surprised myself by enjoying the whole thing, minus some of the ridiculous head wind. Attached are some pictures from the day.
long day ahead..
0.0
0.0
Angel's Stadium along the way
Added to the long ride was upping the long run of the week to 2 hours.
Up ahead, the hardest week of training...
6/28/2010
Final hard week bumped up to a little over 21 hours! Yikes.
Another long hard bike. Longer, but with the same amount of hard as last week. I went back to the same Santa Ana River Trail because it’s such an awesome stretch of road with no stopping. It ended up being 75.5 miles and finished at 4 and a half hours. Such a long time. There was 90 minutes of harder riding total, but broken up throughout the ride. The extra distance was round during a quick offshoot down PCH in Huntington. Lovely place to ride, definitely going to ride there more often from now on.
Long run of the week was tough. Ran down Huntington again. Total of 2:05 and 12.86 miles. Almost a half marathon, good enough for me.
That’s basically it. Those were my key workouts, and the long ones where I wish I could have done it with more people. But I’m over here by my lonesome training for a Half Ironman. Life is tough.
1 week to Carlsbad Sprint, 3rd year in a row
2 weeks to Vineman
Bring on the taper!
Happy Independence Day!
There are 2 more weeks until my first Half Ironman.
I have been training my butt off. Pretty much like it’s my job, because it is this summer.
So now that I’m starting taper, I thought I’d make some updates on how my hard weeks played out.
6/7/2010
The week of the Redondo Sprint race I did 13:18 hours of training. It was a bit lower to rest up for the nice little sprint fun.
6/14/2020
The week of Father’s Day totaled 18 hours.
Long bike on Tuesday was about 3 hours long. I took the road bike out and just explored a new area and went down a new bike trail, Peter’s Canyon Mountain to Sea Trail. I only went partway down it because it branches off and you have to catch back up to it after taking side streets and I didn’t know where to go.
Long run was about 1:45.
6/21/2010
This week bumped up to a little over 19 hours.
Long bike turned into a long and HARD bike.. much to my dismay. I had to find a 90 minute stretch of road or trail where I never had to stop for a stop light. I thought it was impossible. And after arguing with Marc for a while, I finally decided to look up the Santa Ana River Trail that I had ridden with my dad last year. And surprisingly enough there is a 30 mile stretch of road with no stops. I had a venue, now I just needed the motivation to ride hard by myself for an hour and a half.
Well I did it and the entire thing was 70 miles in 4:06. And I surprised myself by enjoying the whole thing, minus some of the ridiculous head wind. Attached are some pictures from the day.
long day ahead..
0.0
0.0
Angel's Stadium along the way
Added to the long ride was upping the long run of the week to 2 hours.
Up ahead, the hardest week of training...
6/28/2010
Final hard week bumped up to a little over 21 hours! Yikes.
Another long hard bike. Longer, but with the same amount of hard as last week. I went back to the same Santa Ana River Trail because it’s such an awesome stretch of road with no stopping. It ended up being 75.5 miles and finished at 4 and a half hours. Such a long time. There was 90 minutes of harder riding total, but broken up throughout the ride. The extra distance was round during a quick offshoot down PCH in Huntington. Lovely place to ride, definitely going to ride there more often from now on.
Long run of the week was tough. Ran down Huntington again. Total of 2:05 and 12.86 miles. Almost a half marathon, good enough for me.
That’s basically it. Those were my key workouts, and the long ones where I wish I could have done it with more people. But I’m over here by my lonesome training for a Half Ironman. Life is tough.
1 week to Carlsbad Sprint, 3rd year in a row
2 weeks to Vineman
Bring on the taper!
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