Deer Creek Olympic Triathlon - TriathlonOlympic

A good swim! I felt like I spent an inordinate amount of time swimming into people, getting swam into, avoiding kicks to the face, etc.... and I definitely lost some time to occasionally having to wait for people as I'd get boxed-in in traffic, but overall it felt good, I stayed within my abilities and just cruised smooth.

Not too much. I bettered my swim time from last year by 6+ minutes. I'd like to be faster, but I certainly cannot be unhappy with that, at all!!

I'm quite happy with this transition. I came out of the water feeling strong, immediately started to run and pulled the cap and goggles off and started to work my way out of the top of the wetsuit as I ran up the hill to transition. I got to transition and quickly did the two-step stomp to get the legs of the suit off, threw it over the rack then put on helmet and bike shoes. I paused briefly to make sure that I hadn't forgotten anything because my last two events were so cold that I had to wear gloves and other gear and it felt weird to be done with transition so quickly. I grabbed the bike and started to run out of transition, then hit the mount line and did a running jump onto the bike and hit the pedals....

Not too much.

... and as soon as I jumped onto the bike and hit the pedals, the first pedal stroke told me that my chain was off. I stopped, got off the bike and fixed the chain, then got back on and finally got started. I probably only lost 20-30 seconds, if that.

I was surprised by how comfortable the first lap felt, and even the first leg which is into the wind didn't feel bad at all, and then we turned and had cross & tail winds and it didn't take long for me to run out of gear on the bike. I could have probably increased my cadence a bit, but I was moving well and comfortably, so why mess with it, right? Then I hit the first hill.... man, I forgot what a bear this thing is. Steep. Small ring in front, biggest cog in the back, and unfortunately, I didn't think about which cassette I had on back until just now (lol!) so I only had 12-23 to handle it with. Spun up it as best I could, took most of it out of the saddle... then it was back to trying to hammer it. Bombed the downhills as fast as I could go. The second lap still felt pretty good, but I could start to feel a little fatigue in the quads and hip flexors toward the end of it. The last uphill sucked, but then I was at the top and on my way into T1 - and feeling TONS fresher than I did on this course last year while bettering my time for the bike by 5+ minutes.

What else?? Train more ;-)

I also see now that my avg cadence was WAAAY too low... I need to work on that. I'm a masher so I don't ever expect myself to hold the "ideal" of 90, but I should be closer to 85, for sure.

Again, I caught myself a little off guard with how little there was to do in T2 when I don't have to deal with cold weather gear, so I took a few extra seconds to do a mental double check, then took a couple of extra swigs of water from the water bottle I left in transition.... and away we go!

Just keep moving! I could probably shave 30 seconds here.

This is where I sucked. While I was 7 minutes faster than my time for the run last year, that's really more just a commentary on how bad last year was, hehe. I started off well, but I just faded. The legs were tired and hurt and I didn't have the mindset or HTFU to push through the hurt My PR for the 10k is 45:xx, so this is TERRIBLY slower coming off the bike, but I really need to get better at running off the bike. Of course, I haven't ridden the bike but two other times in the last two months, so that, I am sure, is a large part of it. In any case, though, I did walk twice, but only for about 100 yards each time... the rest of the time I kept a fairly consistent shuffle going, kept water in me, and over my head to stay cool, and actually smiled a lot. Last year was a Death March. This year hurt, but I had fun with it, even if my legs just didn't feel like they had much in them for much of it.

Gotta improve my ability to run off the bike.

Hung out and talked with all of the Team RWB people we had there... AWESOME turnout, and so great to meet new folks as well as see the familiar faces.


Me.

Getting even with the course that kicked my butt last year is a thing of beauty. Setting a P.R. by almost 20 minutes? Priceless.



Love HFP events. They put on good races at good prices.