Maumee Bay Olympic Triathlon - Triathlon

At the start, ran into the water and as soon as the water felt deep enough I dove forward.
The goggles proceeded to slip and slide down my face, so I rolled onto my back to get my face clear and then kicked/pushed with my feet as I rolled back onto my face and readjusted with both hands. The goggles were good to go the rest of the swim.

Unfortunately, my sighting was off, too. The swim was a few hundred yards out to the first turn buoy, then a right-hand turn and 50-ish yards to the next buoy, right hand turn and then all the way back and then you do a second loop.

Well, I somehow lost sight of buoy #1 and had been sighting on buoy #2 and didn't realize it until I was almost right on top of it. So, I did an about-face in the water and swam back to buoy #1 to go around it and finally get back to buoy #2. While I didn't miss any more buoys, I did nearly swim into two kayaks and continued to meander through the course.

Got to the rack and the suit came off cleanly (first time using TriGlide on the outside of the suit and on my heels, and I like it). Gel flask went into the back pocket, helmet went on and I grabbed the bike to go. Unfortunately, my rear wheel bumped the bike next to me and started to tip it over. I tried to quickly rest my bike against my thigh while catching his to keep his from falling and mine fell in the process. Go his bike set back up, picked mine up and ran on outta T1.

Move just a hair slower to make sure my wheel clears things around me.

Half the course was headwinds, the other half was tailwinds with the remants of Tropical Storm Bill moving through the area. Some decent gusts, but nothing too bad, even with a 90 front and disc rear.

First loop went decently, except I had all sorts of electronic equipment issues. The Vector pedals kept dropping out, so I had no power or cadence information. Unfortunately, this made the Garmin 510 kinda wonky, so I also didn't have speed. In the end, I pretty much only had heart rate and perceived exertion for this ride. Ran the HR well into what would be my threshold area the whole time... I haven't been training well this year, so paces (when I could see them) were expectedly slower than I'd prefer.

Things were finally going decent when I missed the turn for the start of Lap 2 and instead ended up heading back to transition. I realized it WAY too late (or, perhaps I accepted the realization way too late) and turned around at T2 and headed back out. In looking at the Garmin track after-the-fact, this cost me 6 1/2 minutes as I really had little interest in peddling hard coming back out. I strongly considered taking a DNF rather than coming back out for Lap 2. Just as I was about to make the turn back onto the start of Lap 2, I got stuck behind a slow moving RV. Fortunately, he kept going straight where I needed to hang a right, so it was only a minimal additional delay. Still, at this point my give-a-shit meter was running pretty low and I had stopped riding in aero and wasn't really giving full effort. It wasn't until the next turn a mile or two up the road that I finally went back into aero and that was only because the headwinds were so strong that they were annoying the hell out of me and I needed to get my body out of the wind, so I'm back in aero and started to work the pedals again. Generally speaking, the rest of the ride was uneventful and I continued to work, but my race was pretty much done at this point. Got the feet out of the shoes decently and made a clean dismount into T2.

I don't even know.

Solid T2, even with taking my sweet time to take a shot from the gel flask and a swig from the sports bottle, this moved along nicely. Easily could have had it under 1 minute had I been moving with a real purpose. Helmet was off and run shoes were on in seconds.

Nothing.

This is where I mailed it in.
I was in no hurry. My Zn3 heart rate zone is 155-167. The race plan was to start this about 8 beats higher than my bike, where I averaged about 160. I ended up keeping it in the low to mid 160's the whole way; I even helped cheer on guys in my AG to keep going, once even slowing down alongside a guy that was really suffering (and yes, he finished ahead of me).

I was hot, and I was feeling parched -- I may not have taken enough fluids on the bike -- and I was just enjoying cruising along and chatting to people.

Nothing. It wasn't a race anymore when it got to the run.

Went and chilled out in the Team RWB tent and began to take in as many fluids as I could.

I was MUCH more dehydrated than I realized, got dizzy & lightheaded a couple of times even while seated.


Mistakes, and lots of them.


HFP Racing always puts on a good show... they're the best in Ohio, and perhaps the Mid-West in general.