About IMRoycer81

Richmond, Virginia, United States
Thanks for visiting! I'm a civil litigator at KPMLaw. I attended Cornell where I swam IM and Breastroke. In 2007 I filled the void of swimming retirement with triathlon. In my first tri I thought, "holy sh*t this is painful" and "when can I do it again?" Things escalated quickly and my first half iron was in Augusta 2009 and my first full iron was Louisville 2011. Since 2007 I've been chasing a dream of qualifying for the World Champs in Kona, Hawaii. Prior to September 2017 this blog focused on attempts (and failures) to achieve an elusive KQ. I got the monkey off my back in my 10th Ironman at Chattanooga in 2017. I was fortunate to qualify again in 2022. There is always room to improve, and I look forward to putting in the work to become a consistent podium finisher. I couldn't do any of this without my amazing family. I am lucky to train in a fantastic triathlon town with inspirational athletes. My job, training, and daughters keep me busy, but I update as often as I can. I'm always willing to share the knowledge I've picked up along the way. Thanks for reading!

Monday, July 16, 2012

Jamestown International Race Report...My first (and hopefully last) Duathlon!

Total Time- 1:48:32, 2nd Overall, 1st M 30-34

Jamestown International is a new race in Setup Events Virginia Triathlon Series.  I signed up for this race on a whim.  There are not many Olympic distance races locally and I wanted to take the opportunity to squeeze in another Olympic prior to Rocketts Landing and Louisville.  Even though the race was in Williamsburg, I was fortunate in that my little sis lives in Williamsburg and kind enough to let me crash at her place so I wouldn't have to drive to Williamsburg at the ass crack of dawn on race morning.

My coach was not pleased with my decision to race as it was out of town and I was pretty fried the previous weekend at the Tavern Triathlon.  He objected strenuously to my participation and gave it his best shot to convince me to bail.  While I certainly understood and appreciated his position, I ultimately decided to race.  I really weighed the pros and cons of racing and it was a difficult decision.  For me it ultimately boiled down to keeping this fun.  Training for Ironman is extremely difficult and time consuming.  Everyone that knows me knows I truly love suffering on a daily basis, but as much as I love training, I love racing even more.  It has been especially fun this year climbing up the local rankings and seeing huge time improvements at various local races.  I don't want triathlon to become an activity where my whole focus boils down to one Ironman each year with a laser focus on qualifying for Kona.  From a mental standpoint it helps me to break up the arduous periods of training with racing so I can chart my progress and compare my performances to previous years.  I also firmly believe that there are large benefits to racing on blown out legs (both physically and mentally).  I think these tired races give me additional mental toughness and will help prepare me for the inevitable dark periods of pain and suffering that necessarily arise during the course of an Ironman.  Despite our disagreement, I know that Coach Flanigan absolutely has my best interest at heart and is in my corner every step of the way.  Like every healthy relationship, we aren't going to agree 100% of the time but the most important thing to me is that Coach has my back.

On the night before the race we had some nasty thunderstorms roll through the area.  In fact when I woke up on race morning it was still thundering and lightning.  It was still raining and thundering when I arrived at the race site.  Upon arrival, I quickly learned that they had pushed the start time back 30 minutes because of the inclement weather and the race director was debating whether or not to cancel the swim.  Apparently the severe weather had blown the swim buoys out of the water and the weather was preventing the boats from going back out and setting them up again.  This really annoyed me because I have no desire to ever participate in a duathlon.  The idea of taking away my strength in the water and adding another run before the bike is not appealing to me so I held out hope that the swim would go forward as planned.  I decided that I would keep a positive attitude and roll with whatever happened.  I got my transition area set up, did a quick spin on my bike and got a decent run warm up in.

Shortly thereafter the announcement came that they were canceling the swim and we were shifting to a duathlon.  The swim would be replaced by a one mile run....shit.  I gave myself about 30 seconds to be pissed and then checked my attitude and got ready to race.  I have never done a duathlon and had no idea how to attack the race.  I decided I would be conservative on the first run because I knew the fast runners could only do so much damage in one mile and I was hoping I could make up much of the difference on the bike.
Run 1- 6:52, 1.10 Miles, 6:14/Mile
I was pretty conservative on the first run.  I figured that the thrill of the race would carry me to a decent split without much effort and I was right.  I also expected that many of the racers would be overly aggressive on the first run.  I decided to run at my own speed and let everyone else do their thing.  It was certainly different coming into T1 in 41st place as opposed to the advantage that I usually have coming out of the water with my strong swim background.

T1- 1:00
My first transition was actually pretty good.  I was able to get my run shoes off and into my bike gear quickly and efficiently.  I will say that the transition is certainly easier in a duathlon in that I was not soaking wet and muddy.

Bike- 57:57, 23.9 Mph, Avg Power 308, 2nd OA bike split
I felt pretty great on the bike despite being on tired legs.  I rode 80 miles the day before in some pretty brutal heat.  The bike course is dead flat with only one rise in elevation as you go over the Chickahominy River.  I passed a huge group of cyclists pretty early in the bike course and ended up doing the vast majority of the ride alone.  I kept thinking there was more cyclists up the road but when I got to the turn around I realized that I was out front.  I came to find out later that there was a handful of really fast runners that were led off the bike course by the lead moto.  This actually bummed me out a bit and I think it would have pushed me a bit harder to try and run them down on the back half of the bike if they hadn't been led astray.  With a flat course my whole focus was on maintaining a great aero position and producing consistent power numbers.  I think I was successful on both fronts and was very pleased with my bike split.

T2- 1:00
I was pretty pleased with T2.  Generally I suck at transitions but I was in and out of this one fairly quickly as well.  A quick back into my run gear and I was the first athlete out on the run course for the International distance race.

Run 2- 10K, 41:43, 6:43/mile
The run course was also dead flat.  There wasn't much shade and it was very hot and muggy.  I was definitely suffering on the run.  I also found there were not enough water stations out on the run course.  There were a few points when I found myself really needing ice water to lower my core temperature but it was nowhere to be found.  The middle section of the run course took us through some type of trail system which was a nice change of pace from a traditional road run.  At this point I knew I was out front and my whole goal was maintaining a lead on the stronger runners.  There was a long stretch before we hit a turn around and I could gauge how much of a lead I had.  At the turn around, I realized I had a decent lead but knew it was evaporating quickly and would likely be gone by the time we got to the finish line.  This is typically my least favorite part of every triathlon (running for my life with the knowledge that the stronger runners are closing like a freight train).  I just did my best to focus on my splits and hoped it would be enough to keep me out front.  A fast Endorphin athlete named Parker Spencer caught me in the final home stretch.  He told me that he was one of the cyclists that had been led off course and he had been disqualified.  He told me congratulations and backed off so I could cross the line first.  It was a really magnanimous gesture and a great show of sportsmanship which I really appreciated.  Parker Spencer is a class act.

At the end of the day my performance was good enough to net me second overall.  I was obviously pleased with this result as it was my first (and hopefully only) duathlon.  It was more fun than I was expecting and I had a good experience.  I had a great time and was glad I did the race.  It was nice to spend some time with my sister and her fiancé and my mom and dad.  We had a particularly delicious and fattening breakfast after the race.  I am happy that I decided to do this race because I had a nasty bike crash a few days later which is going to prevent me from racing Rocketts (bike crash blog post to follow).  Thanks for reading!

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