Swim
Comments: Even though I was slow, I was actually more pleased with my swim leg on this race than my bike and run...pretty sad. Heck, anytime I can get in the top 1/3 of a swim for my AG I'm happy. I could feel my sciatica starting to act up about halfway thru the swim, which was unusual. I raced elite wave, so my results weren't in the AG results, but I figured out from my time where I would have placed and went with that for the unofficial AG ranks. Results had 10 year groupings for AG What would you do differently?: Not much - pleased with the effort Transition 1
Comments: Really took my time in T1 due to the inclement weather (cool, wind, drizzle). Decided to put armwarmers on and a bike vest to guard against the wind. Probably my slowest T1 time in history but no bigee. Bike
Comments: Never felt like I had much zing in the legs today. Had done a lot of garden work the past few days and my legs were trashed from that. About halfway thru the bike leg I could hear my rear brake pad rubbing a bit. I really didn't want to stop to mess with it so I kept going - really was distracting to hear it. Could feel the sciatica the last 3 miles..kind of seized-up my left ass cheek a little and it cut down on the power I could generate out of the leg. So, I was surprised I ranked so high overall and AG on the bike despite a so-so effort. Bike split was 3 minutes slower than last year on the same course. Buffalo is starting to become a somewhat dangerous race. The Oly and sprint races share much of the course. The last 3 miles of the bike course were pretty dicey due to the much slower sprint racers joining the Oly course to the finish. The last 1/4 mile was totally congested and I had to wait longer than I wanted to in order to get out of my shoes and ride with my feet on top. Transition 2
Comments: uneventful Run
Comments: Wow, my feet felt like ice cubes after that chilly swim and bike. Never got any feeling into them until about 2 miles into the run. Felt like the effort was pretty decent but couldn't get into that last gear. The congestion on the run course between T2 and the sprint turnaround was crazy. Had to do a lot of dodging of people as I passed people on the left and right. Had to be careful passing on the right because bikers were returning on the last part of their bike leg on the same part of the course. Had to watch out passing on the left due to sprint racers returning to the finish. Once you got past the sprint turnaround spot things got quiet. I met Tom as he was making his return from the turnaround to the finish and knew how much I was down to him timewise (he put 2+ minutes on me on the swim). I knew there wasn't enough real estate to catch him so I kind of throttled back a little bit and figured I'd save the mental effort for IM CDA in 2 weeks. Post race
Warm down: Walked straight from the finish line to my transition area to get dry and put some warm clothes on. Pic below shows how we were dressed more for March than June weather. Chatted a bit with Bryan (mndiver) after the race. What limited your ability to perform faster: Legs had no zing today but good little bout of intensity as I wrap things up for IM CDA in 2 weeks. Event comments: Hard to rate this race. The venue itself is awesome but the overlap of the sprint and Oly courses is starting to get dangerous with 1,500 people. I've enjoyed this race the past 3 years but will have to think hard about whether I want to do it in 2010. Last updated: 2009-05-23 12:00 AM
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United States
Buffalo Triathlon
50F / 10C
Precipitation
Overall Rank = 24/373
Age Group = 40-49
Age Group Rank = 7/78
Met Tom and Kevin in Scandia at 5:30 for the ride to Buffalo. Arrived at a decent hour. Got my packet and stuff and headed to the rack area. A bunch of people in the elite rack were pointed in the direction of the transition exit so I grabbed a spot on the opposite side...no biggee I thought. After a minute some punk teenager arrived on the other side and asked "who's bike is this?". He had claimed a picnic sized spot on the other side from me and my rear wheel was to the right of all his stuff but he freaked out cuz he thought I was too close to him. I calmy told him to "chill out" several times even though I really wanted to just slap the little brat. Wasn't worth the hassle so I moved farther down the rack. I got some satisfaction later on the run when I saw him heading out for his first half while I was going back in to the finish. We looked at each other and I know he recognized me but he was in such agony that I didn't have the heart to say anything...little prick.
Took the bike out for a spin. Everything seemed fine...found out later it wasn't. Chatted with BT'ers Ben (benihana) and Jeff (leapdog) in transition.