Mountain Man Triathlon - Olympic Distance - TriathlonOlympic

I've done a lot more swimming in the past year than I have in previous years and I've been getting some coaching/lessons. I was okay to the first bouy and then between bouy 1 and 2 I was starting to feel like I was going to have a repeat of last year's horrible swim. Finally I told myself to HTFU and put my face in the water and work and I did. The 2nd half of the swim was really comfortable and I got into a nice rhythm. I'm still far from 'fast' but last year was 48:18 and this year was 37:58...better than a 10 minute improvement. This set me up for a much better race.

I think my wetsuit comfort is playing a role in my 1st half performance. I only wear it once every 3-4 months so I think it takes a bit to get used to the constricting feeling as well as maybe it loosening up a bit. Maybe I need it bigger, but I've only gotten smaller since I bought it.

I wasted a bit of time here that I shouldn't have. I forgot to loosen the tightening mechanism on my helmet, so I had to do that and then finally I wasted several seconds putting on the wrist strap for my Garmin that was mounted to the bike for the ride. Not an amazing transition, but still faster than last year. Last year was 4:01 after my crappy swim.

Leave the Garmin wrist strap for T2 and don't forget to loosen up the helmet strap. Otherwise, this won't get much faster until I learn to get the damn wetsuit off my feet faster. I always have to sit down and get it off my heels.

Took a few minutes to get the HR down from my run through transition and then the short climb out of the transition area. Once on the course, I was trying to keep it under 160, but the hills obviously drove up my average. Having managed to get out of the water 10 minutes faster this year, there was a lot more traffic on the course to contend with. I did a fair amount of passing and stayed on my aerobars a lot more than last year. I'm not a big fan of descending while on my aerobars at this point, but I did manage to keep on them down the first significant decline where I hit 32mph while staying aero. The climb sapped all my speed and I was crawling up at 7mph for a bit. I was hoping for a bit of a break from the head/cross wind after turnaround and it was good for a bit, but toward the end, the wind ended up back in my face in the last several miles. Last year I wanted to hit at least 40mph on the way down the big hill and missed it by about 0.5mph. This year I hit 43.4mph at one point and probably could have hit 45 if I was running my 11-23 cassette instead of my 12-28. It was awesome to be going that fast though and I can't imagine how the really fast dudes (and dudettes) have enough courage to stay on the aerobars that those speeds. Last year I finished this course in 1:26:47. This year's time was more than 10 minutes better.

I need to continue my aerobic base building to keep my HR down and improve aerobic speed. Maybe one day I can convince myself to buy a new carbon bike, but I have a lot of engine work to do.

I kind of fumbled getting my right foot on top of my shoe after getting it out. My right shoe was hitting the ground and I took a second or two to get that under control on the way into T2. I finally got that taken care of and my left foot cleanly out and rode right up to the dismount line and hopped off. For some reason I ran right by my bike rack (I was in the 4th rack as I told myself several times in the swim) and ended up on the wrong side of the 5th rack. So...I had to take my bike and quickly slide it under that rack (which was happily still quite empty) and then rack my bike from the opposite side that I originally racked it. Duh... Got out of my shoes and helmet and grabbed my stuff and started running through transition, putting on my race belt and resetting my garmin.

Pay attention to my bike rack location. Last year's time was 1:51, so even with my racking blunder, it was an improvement.

I was determined to come in under three hours this year. It seemed like a big goal to knock off over 25 minutes, so I knew I couldn't fall apart on the run. I managed a 9:11 on the first mile and then the hill hit. I thought I could maintain a 10:15-10:30 pace up the hill, but that didn't materialize. Instead I was more like 11:15-11:30. I got to the top still feeling good and kept moving. When we got to the turnaround, the course seemed like it was a bit short, but maybe my Garmin wasn't too accurate. Down hill felt much better and once at the bottom of the hill knowing that I had only ~1.5 miles to go was a booster. I kept on it as best I could w/o sending my HR through the roof and managed a 9:30 pace or so to the end. I did manage to keep passing the occasional person to the end and picked up the pace to about an 8:10 pace at the end. I was going to sprint to pass one more guy, but decided that sprinting for 143rd place instead of 144th was kind of stupid. My time last year was 1:04:41 and this year was over 6 minutes faster.

Keep up the aerobic base building.

My horrible race last year had a finish time of 3:25:35. This year I managed to drop that down to 2:56:50, almost a 30 minute improvement! Even if the run course was a bit short (~.18 miles by my Garmin) I'd still have come in well under 3 hrs. This is a rough course but very satisfying to finish it.