HKG

What a difference a week makes. Last week I raced the Palembang Asian Cup in Indonesia and was able to secure my first major win. This week I was a little further down the results finishing in 9th. When compared to my other results this season, 9th would have been ok, but after you have a paradigm-shifting performance, your views on what is “good” and what is “sub-par” begin to change.

Hong Kong is an incredible city. It is China, but it has been tempered, shaped, and molded by Western occupation into this entity that is unlike any other. It has amazing food, plenty of culture, world-renowned shopping, and arguably the best skyline in the world. It is an exciting and dynamic mix of cultures, and I just can’t seem to get enough of the city. Much like the city itself, the composition of men’s field boasted a broad range of international athletes from all over the globe. With several Beijing Olympians and World Cup winners, the field was not only diverse, but also highly competitive.

The race venue at the Hong Kong ITU race was also unique: it took place in Disneyland. The swim was in the ocean just outside the steps of the Disneyland Hotel. The bike traversed through the maze of roads exiting the park out toward a large bridge (read: hill) which we went up and down it seven times. The run was flat and went through the grounds as well. When you combined the speed of the swim, the hills on the bike, and the humid oven on the run you had one tough race!

The swim start was the dreaded in-water start. I got hit in the first stroke of the swim, and continued to get hit until I exited 1500 meters later. Despite this, I managed to swim well, and exited in the front pack of 6 containing the Polyansky Brothers, the Alterman Brothers, and Daniel Sapunov. We had a small break out of the water and worked hard the first few k’s of the bike to keep the gap, but were swallowed up by one chase pack, then another and then another. Coming into T2 almost the entire field had bridged up to the front pack.

After a little bauble into transition I ran hard to make up the ground I had lost, but I knew instantly that I was going to be in for a tough run. Unlike last week when I felt good the instant the run started, this week the legs felt heavy, and my stomach was giving me issues. I did what I could, ran hard to the end, and crossed the line in 9th place. It was a solid field, but I can’t help but be disappointed after the great result from the weekend before. The form and ability are there, but part of racing successfully on the ITU circuit is the ability to back up results week after week, no matter how the body feels.

Congratulations to Tony Moulai for a great win! Monsieur Moulai is looking quite fit heading in to the Huatulco Word Cup next month. As for me, this Asia trip was quite successful, and has set me up well for the rest of the season and into 2010. Now I am heading back to the USA to recover and to get ready for the Huatulco Word Cup on November 8th. Although the season is winding down, my fitness is solid, my motivation is high I and can’t wait to get to the next start line!

Here are some pics from Indonesia last week:

Junior and ITU podiums at Award Ceremony

suffering in the heat on the run

running out of T2

being interviewed by the governor of Sumatra

Cheers,

B

a win, a win, a win!

I just won my first ever pro race!!! And it was over Dmitry Polyanksy, which to me, is a huge deal. The support and emails have been awesome. I wrote a blog for the ITU website www.triathlon.org and they posted it here.

Here is a copy of what I wrote for them:

Traveling to and racing an ITU Asian Cup is often as much about the experience of the race as it is the race itself. It seems no matter how crazy the travel, unique the venue, or how spectacular the karaoke-singing race organizer is, there always seems to be several similar themes that these races share: an enthusiastic local organizing committee, huge community involvement, and wonderful athlete support. Last weekend’s 2009 Palembang ITU Asian Cup in Palembang, Indonesia was no different.

After a difficult first half of the season I found some good form heading into September and went looking to find some races. As the North American ITU racing scene had died down, the only choice was to head to Asia. I have raced here often and enjoy the different cultures and unique racing opportunities that are presented.

I arrived in Palembang after a nightmare five flights and 45 hours of travel. It may have been a nightmare, but it was a planned nightmare, as this was the quickest route from the US. I arrived tired, but excited about the prospect of racing. First up on Saturday was the Asian Aquathlon Championships. This event was the day before the triathlon, and consisted of a 1000m swim and a 2.5k run. It was a good way to ‘open up the system’ after all the travel. It was also good fun and I ended up second place behind Dmitry Polyansky from Russia, and felt good heading into Sunday’s triathlon.

Race day arrived, and I was ready to go. The swim was in a spring-fed lake named Lake Opi. It was very clean, but presented a few shocks to the system. Because Palembang, along with all of Indonesia sit in a very seismic region (Palembang is located on Sumatra and 500km away from the recent earthquake in Padang), this spring-fed lake had quite a bit more sulphur than usual. It was quite interesting climbing out of the water and feeling like your teeth were furry! In addition to this, there were also alligators! It was quite scary at first, but these ones were actually very small (about the length of your arm). I didn’t want to ask what happens to small alligators when they grow up. Big alligators!? Maybe that was some of the unique local cuisine we were sampling…

With a 6:30am start, the horn went off before you knew it, and we were off. I swam well, and exited the water very comfortably in the lead pack. Onto the bike a lead pack of five formed that included the Polyansky brothers, Dmitry and Igor. The bike was route consisted of simple out and backs, and our group was able to work well together and build on our advantage. As we rode the sun continued to heat up the road, and I knew it would be a hot one on the run.

I had a good transition and took off for a super-hot 10k in the sun. I like the heat, and felt really good so I pushed the pace right out of transition. Dmitry Polyansky was the only one to respond, and we ran stride for stride for the rest of the 10k. At 6k and 8k into the run Polyansky put two really strong surges in, but I was feeling great and was able to respond. I decided to wait to make my move until the finish. With 200m to go, I gave it all I had and was able to pull away and take the win! I had a few spare seconds to celebrate and really relished the moment. This was my first ITU victory, and I couldn’t have been happier. It was a great race for me, and really good confirmation of my recent training and form.

Afterwards we were treated like celebrities by the locals: there were hundreds of local children who clamored for our autographs, the governor of Sumatra hosted the awards dinner and reception for us, and the media seemed awestruck that people from Russia, Canada, USA, and all over the world would come to tiny Palembang to race a triathlon. Mark Sungkar, president of Indonesian Triathlon Federation and race organizer (and as evidenced at the awards party….karaoke super star!) put this event together to help boost local interest in the sport and to grow triathlon within Indonesia. Mark has a passion for triathlon, and it is evident in his determination to grow the sport in his corner of the world. Now I am off to Hong Kong to race next weekend, where I am sure another great race and adventure awaits!

I will post some pics, and video from the race shortly....thanks for reading!

cheers,

b

training and training

the run in PG

I'd like to keep the content rolling on my blog, which means when I am not racing that either I have to talk about others racing or myself training. Today, I am gonna post about about my training over the last several weeks.

When I was in France during my altitude training camp (early August), all I could do was train and rest. Besides frequent naps, I did a lot of talking, and hopefully, more listening. I had the benefit of being around, and training with, some of the best triathletes and coaches around.

I talked with several people about how poorly my season had gone so far this year, and several specifc things I could do to turn it around. This brings us to today's post. One of the key components that has been absent from my training is speed-work (on the run). I am not talking about running close to 10k goal race pace, but getting up and firing off some 400's all-out! There are several reasons specific to me that I need to especially work on this, but I will save those for another post.

The structure of the last few weeks has looked very similar. This is the first time I have done the same workouts week-in and week-out for a long period of time, but I am really am enjoying it! There have been just slight progressions in either the speed or duration of the interval from week-to-week. Since my run is the limiting factor right now, the weeks have been organized around 3 key sessions (4 if you include my long run). Here they are:

Tues: 6-10 x 400 FAST on 3:00--Started out at 6 and am building up to 10-12 holding the same pace.

Thurs-AM Run, Hard Bike w/intervals and then straight to the track: 2x3200m w/2min; 3x2k, 1k w/90; and 4x2k w/90 was the progression over the last few weeks. Distance has increased and the pace has gotten faster.

Sat-Hill Repeats. 4x2:30min repeats @ 8%, and 4-6x30s @ 8%. These were done to focus on my toe-off/drive part of my run, and to work on increasing my stride length. As I move into the last few hard weeks of my season, the Saturday Hill repeats will be phased out and I will start to introduce another speed session on the flats....probably off the bike.

Sun-14-16 mile long run, but cruisy

The other runs have been double runs and fillers to get me to around 55-60miles per week (90-100k). This has been the formula for about the last 5 weeks now, and it has been working well.

I have been swimming extremely well in the pool, and the bike has been rolling along. I ran decent at Pacific Grove after a very, very hard ride, and I think there will be even bigger improvements to come in my last three races. That is it for now. Just wanted to give you a little glimpse into wha tI have been doing over the last 5 weeks. Thanks for reading.

Cheers,
b

a step in the right direction

I got 4th this past weekend in the Pacific Grove International Triathlon in California. I ended up 8 seconds behind 3rd so I was tantalizingly close to the podium!! Overall I am happy with how the race went, but a little peeved at a small mistake that cost me a higher finish...

I had a great start to the swim even though it was about 53 degrees! I was in the lead pack of 4 (including myself) for the swim and stayed there for the entirety of it. We had a lead of about 55s or so on the rest of the field....this pack was the race! Normally I have a great T1 and am super fast taking off the wetsuit. Not that day. It got stuck around BOTH ankles. While I lost maybe 6-10s because of this, it was just enough to keep me from making it to the bike with the 3 others. I hung right behind fora while but could not bridge up, and had to wait/get caught by another small group of 2 behind me.

I rode the whole bike with the 2 guys (Manny and Jamie Stephenson from Canada) and we couldn't hold the time to the front group (Flash, John Dahlz, and Kyle Leto). For 3 of the 4 laps we were holding steady at 1min, but the last lap we ran out of juice and lost another 30-45seconds. Coming into T2 I was really fatigued from the ride, but still down 1:30+ to the leaders.....not the plan!

Onto the run my legs felt surprisingly ok! I ran well and steady for the first 2 laps with Manny and then made a surge on the last lap to try to reel in John Dahlz. I knew I was closing on him, but due to the twisting nature of the course, I couldn't see him until right before the finish line. I ran in 8 seconds behind him for 4th place with the 2nd fastest run split. If I would have been in the group that I swam with??? That is the nature of triathlons...so many variables. Transitions are the 4th discipline, and I will start working on mine!

All in all it was a great weekend and really gave me some confidence back. I am in really good shape and I needed a race like that to get my head back into the game. I am starting a 3 week block before I head to Asia to do 2 races in the middle of October. I am excited to continue to build on the gains I have made in the past several weeks.

Cheers,

B

back to blogging

not a bad view, eh?

Haven't blogged in a while, but I am not too sorry about it this time. I needed some time away from writing my thoughts down as racing has not gone as expected (to say the least). Last time I blogged I had just arrived at the Centre Nationale de Entrainement Altitude (CNEA) in Font Romeu, France. I am no longer in Font, but back in Fort Worth, Texas so I will fill you in on the details.....

I spent 3 weeks up at altitude in Font Romeu w/ about the best training group you could hope for. France, New Zealand, Switzerland, Australia, Belgium, Luxembourg, Scotland, and Hong Kong were all represented there. While everyone had different plans, we all swim, bike, run and thus were able to train quite a bit together. By far it was one of the hardest, most consistent blocks of training I have done. But it was also the most fun. Training in groups with great people just seems to make the miles tick away faster and keep the motivation high. If only l'autre amercains would get this.... Font is beautiful and challenging. As one would guess, when you live on the side of a mountain flat spots are few are far between.I got in quite a bit of volume and still managed a sprucing of intensity (not too much since it was my first time at altitude).

I came down from Font to race Tizzy WC. Coming down from Altitude can be a tricky thing. Sometimes things go brilliantly and sometimes they go pear-shaped. Everyone seems to be different in their responses to coming down. The 3 days leading up to the race, I felt awesome. It was really easy to breath and I felt good with extra rest and extra oxygen.

During the swim I felt a little sluggish, and had a little trouble getting out the first 300m. After that I moved up the field as best I could and thought I was right in the middle of the first pack. I felt great. It wad the easiest swim for me in while. And that turned out to be the problem. I was in the 2nd pack! I hopped on the bike and started chasing. We made up ground quickly and started to reel in the first group. Right as we were about to catch them, there was a crash in our group that took out half our pack. Ouch. We were like 10s down. It totally killed our paceline and motivation and we lost heaps of time. Never made that first pack. Got on the run and had nothing. I gave it a go, but was dead and having trouble breathing. I ran well for 2.5k and then went backwards...literally. I called it a day. I friggin hate dropping out...

Then it was back to the states to get in some more training and racing. I raced nationals two weeks later, missed a buoy and got DQ'd. I wont go into details, but race buoys shouldn't move!
So here I am in September looking back on my season. It has not been good. So the question is do I call it a year early, regroup, and come back firing for next year?? To be honest, this is what I was thinking. I was pretty disheartened after nationals. You should never make a decision right after a race. I took a few days to recoup, regroup, and rethink.

Since June, I have had some of the best, most consistent training I have ever had. While my races haven't shown it, the data is there. I am fit. I need to race. I want to race. I consulted some of the experts I know to try to figure out what I can improve on. I got some great ideas and have been implementing them in my training, and they seem to be paying off. I will get into those in another blog as that is a different topic. Training theories sounds like better off-season blogging material to me.....

So here I am in Fort Worth continuing to tick off the sessions. Things have been going great and I am excited for the "start" of my new season. I am racing 4 more times this year. Next weekend I will head to Pacific Grove in California. I love that race and will be looking to get on the podium (my best result there was 4th, so it is the only logical step). After PG I will return to Fort Worth and do a block of training before I head to Asia. I will race the ITU Indonesia Asian Cup, and the ITU Hong Kong Asian Cup in the middle of October on back-to-back weekends. My last race will be the ITU Hualtulco World Cup in South Texas (read: Mexico) on November 10th.

Looking forward to racing well! Here are some pics from my time in Font Romeu.....enjoy!

the swim squadstuffing my face with cola66 kilos in that pic baybe!contemplating life, triathlon, or maybe nothing...In Andorra @ 2400m...long climb up!got to go to Dirk's "place" on the beach for an afternoon

The gang out at l'ermitage

Cheers,

B

san fran to paris to tours

Just a short one to cover the last two races. I am up at altitude for a training camp. The air is quite thin up here and apparently the thin air affects the internet as well. Sometimes it takes 5 minutes to send an email. They have managed to find something slower than dial-up here.....

San Fran was not great. As the French say, un jour sans (a day without). I had an ok swim and exited at the back of the main pack. I rode in the main pack and then came off looking for a solid run. It didnt happen. I have no real explanation as to why I had such a bad day. My workouts leading up to San Fran were very good. Maybe I was a little fatigued....who knows. I ended up 15th on the day, which is not what I wanted or where I could/should have finished. Onward.

After San Fran I flew to Paris to start my european campaign numero uno. I took the train down to Tours to meet my new French team, Vendome. I really enjoyed the hospitality of Jaques and Patrick for the few days I stayed in Vendome. There were lots of home cooked meals, croissants, and even a little ratatouille. I raced my first French Grand Prix with Vendome last Sunday. I cant explain how FAST this type of racing is. It is half the olympic distance (750m/20k/5k) and draft legal. With nearly 90 guys on the starting line, it is quite a fight in the water. If you combine this with the sinking pontoon (pics below), you have a recipe for a not so fun swim. I was positioned right in the middle of the "pontoon" and got hammered. And it didnt stop until I climbed out of the water. Onto the bike I was the back of a group just meters behind the main group. Unlike the ITU races in the USA, FGP races are toujours au bloc. We were right there but after a few attacks our group shattered and we missed the train. Ouch. I had a good first k off the bike, and then settled into a solid pace for the rest. Running felt much better than San Fran, but still needs quite a bit of work.

Individually I did quite poorly, but it seems most people get housed their first FGP. No excuses, just more work that needs to be done. I do feel as though I am moving in the right direction with the training, and a good result is coming soon. Our team did amazing as we finished 6th (out of 14 teams). There are 4 "super-teams" in France so the others are almost always fighting for 5th place. The first 3 from each team are scored according to their finishing place a la cross-country in the USA. Hopefully I get another crack at the FGP later this year....It was a blast and incredible racing.




Now I am hunkered down in the Pyrenees mountains at Font Romeu. Font is a tiny French town situated in the mountains at an altitude of 1850m. The CNEA (Centre National Entrainement d' Alitutde) is a altitude training center where loads of euros come to train. Paula Radcliffe has an apartment here, so you know the running is pretty good. We actually ran into Paula as we were doing a long run down at the lake 2 days ago. Such an amazing runner.

Originally I was coming up here to train with Dirk Bockel (Luxembourg), but have quickly found out this is the place to be in Europe. It seems like half of the WCS/World Cup ITU circuit is here training. There are endless trails, plenty of climbs, perfect 50m pool, loads of people to train with, and zero distractions. The views of the mountains aren't too bad either! I will post some pics from here soon. I will be here until Tizzy World Cup August 9th. A bientot!

Cheers,
B

about that time

It is about time for an update. Training has been rolling along since I got back from Korea. Nothing too special or crazy, but just some solid work. I had to take about a week ez/recovery after Korea. I thought that I would be fine in a few days, but I think the length of the course, the difficulty, and the long travel home took a little larger toll than expected. After some light training, I hopped in another 10-day block to get ready for San Francisco ITU and then my subsequent Euro-trip.

My next 5 weeks will be quite crazy. Here is the itinerary:
July 9th-Depart for San Francisco
July 11th-San Francisco ITU Triathlon
July 14th-Depart for Paris
July 15th-Arrive in Paris, depart for Vendome
July18th-Depart from Vendome to Tours
July19th-French Grand Prix Triathlon
July 20th-Depart Tours for Font Romeu Training camp (altitude)
Aug 6th-Depart Font Romeu for Paris
Aug 7th-Depart Paris for Budapest, then onto Tizzy (way too long to type actual name)
Aug 9th-Race ITU Tizzy World Cup
Aug 10th-Depart Hungary for Paris
Aug 11th-Fly back to the 'ol USA

Sounds a little crazy, but I think in reality it will be a great trip with some really fast racing, and hopefully some good results. I am really excited about the short altitude camp in the south of France (Font Romeu). It is supposed to be one of the best places in the world to train. I will have a good group of guys there to train with, and the facilities or next to none. I am interested to see how my body responds to altitude. I have not been up in several years, and never in this part of the season.

Of course I will keep the blog updated as I travel. I tend to forget to blog when at home as life is quite monastic and oftentimes just boring. As I travel, I will snap some pics and share the journey. Since some people like to look at pictures and don't like to read, I have put some pics I just found from China last year up. Turns out I am kinda a big deal there.....

I love how the Chinese writing is completely over Betten's face!

Not exactly and ITU-legal uniform...whoops!

And while a mild rock-star in Yicheng, China (don't google it because there is no way you will find it), I enjoy complete anonymity in Fort Worth, Texas. Thanks for reading!

Cheers,

Barrett

giro de Korea

What a race. In so many different ways this race was an experience. From the standard rigors of traveling across the Pacific to the endless hotel transfers to alpe d’huez, this race was memorable and unique experience. In a nutshell, I had a solid race. I swam well, biked conservatively, and had a really good run.

pan-o-rama

And now onto the details…..

My travel to Seoul was fairly uneventful and smooth. After one night in Incheon (the actual city the airport is in), we had a 4hr transfer to our next hotel. As in per the norm in Asian races, leaving at 8:00 means 8:45, and 4hrs could only happen if we had a helicopter and not a 50-person bus. Day one in Incheon ended up being 8hrs on a bus. It only took us 5hrs to drive to our new hotel, but another 3hrs to drive 30k of the course. That’s right, 10k/hr in a bus. Painful. One of the reasons was the terrain, but also we had worst bus driver on the planet. He was slow and wouldn’t drive on the correct side of the road. On the way back to Seoul, he kept falling asleep at the wheel! Apparently he understood enough English that when we were constantly poking fun at him, he got the idea of what we were saying. His way of getting back was constantly getting us lost, finding traffic jams, and driving as slow as possible.

this is really south korea

The one nice thing was that due to the ridiculous logistics of the race, everyone was on the bus together. I had a feeling it was going to be somewhat like this, so instead of stressing out, I just had a laugh….or three. We stayed at 4 hotels in 4 different nights! Every time we moved, we had to transfer all our luggage and bikes with us. What a production. It felt like a floating circus. In 4 days we spent about 17 hours in that bus.
One of the reasons for the hotel and bus situation was that the course was point-to-point. In fact the only discipline where we started and finished at the same place was the swim. The distance was a bit unusual: 3k swim, 80k bike, and 20k run. The swim was in the ocean, the bike was 80k straight up, and the run was from one mountain top to another. The bike had just under 2000m of total climbing and went from 0-1450m elevation. There was one significant climb that was about 10% for 8k, and another 15k climb that probably averaged 8-9% with the last 4k bit well over 12%. Everything else was basically a false flat. It was tough to say the least. The run was just as bad. There was about 10k of downhill running on a really rocky rough “nature” trail followed by some 15-20% hills. On top of it all, the run started at 1450m high, so the air was a little thin.

The funny thing is this was the “easier” course. The organizers had wanted to put some insane hills in the race on the bike and run, but Jan Rehula (Korean National Team Coach, and Sydney Olympics bronze medalist in Triathlon) came to our rescue and said that crawling up the side of a mountain was not triathlon. When we pre-drove the course we all assumed that the winner would take about 5.5hrs. The course ended up being a little faster than anticipated and I finished in 4hrs43min. Time-wise this was still my longest race to date.

The race itself went pretty well. I had a solid swim, and exited in the front pack. I knew the bike was going to be a struggle for me, so my plan was to race it conservatively. My back has been bothering me on and off since St Croix, so with the distance of the race and the long travel and transfers, I was quite worried about it locking up again. It ended up feeling pretty good and I rode well. Looking back, I should have been a little more aggressive on the bike, but I am happy with how it went. Onto the run, I felt amazing. I honestly haven’t felt that good running off the bike in a long, long time. I have no idea why if felt good, but it did. The first 5k I felt like I was floating. I found a great rhythm and focused on the guys up ahead. I ended up reeling in a Japanese guy who went back and forth with me throughout the run. The run was pretty brutal. The first 10k was almost all downhill. It seems easy, but it was so hard trying to run fast and not have your quads lock up. I think the downhill bits were much harder on the legs than the uphill ones. I found myself even with the Japanese guy the last k (which happened to be 16% uphill) and had to put in one burst to beat him. I am glad I did as I ended up 10th…the last money slot! I ended up having the 2nd fastest run of the day, and am really happy about that.

the nicest of our 4 different hotels

This race was really good for me mentally. After DNF’s in St. Croix and ITU Austin, and getting sick at Pan-Am Champs in Oklahoma, it is great not only to finish a race, but to race well! It is always fun for me travelling to new places and catching up will all my friends on the circuit. I am really excited about the next few months as I start to build my speed and start racing more ITU races. I have 4 weeks until I race again (ITU Treasure Island in San Francisco). I am going to dive back into the hard training with another big block coming up. But first, I need a few days recovery…..my legs are so smashed that I can barely walk right now.

the local cuisine...
a video of the finish line area

cheers,

B