Swim
Comments: I just couldn't get my breathing under control and it had nothing to do with the water temp (a balmy 69F). I did FS the short leg out and the short leg in but but gave into my nerves and did some side stroke in between (I'm still kicking myself about this); had to flip onto my back for a moment during the first leg to deal with a leaking goggle. Stayed to the outside the whole way and avoided most of the contact. As I came out of the water I had a hard time stripping the suit because I couldn't find the zipper pull because it ended up hanging in front of me. I beat my target time of 16min, taking 5 minutes off of lasts year's awful swim, but did not have a good swim at all. I'm wondering if the course was short. What would you do differently?: HTFU and SWIM! Transition 1
Comments: it's a fairly log run from the beach to the transition area but that gave me time to finally get the suit stripped and my cap, hood, goggles and earplugs off. I had a little problem getting my feet out of the suit, but not terrible. Socks, shoes, helmet, and sunglasses went on quickly and I ran it out of TA well. Mounted and got moving pretty well, too. About 1 minute faster than last year. What would you do differently?: I need to add some velcro to the suit to hold the end of the zipper cord. Everything else went pretty well. Bike
Comments: almost had a crash at the beginning with a guy who was trying to start up and swerved into my path; around the mid point I was standing and accelerating out of a turn and somehow hit my pedal on the ground...somehow as a result my saddle nose got tipped down and the spent the 2nd half of the ride sliding towards the front of the saddle. Also about half way through I got passed by a women with a "46" on her calf and we spent the rest of the race leap-frogging ahead of each other; we crossed the mat with her right in front of me. All in all a great ride and I got in under my 1 hour target, shaving off about 3 minutes from last year's time. What would you do differently?: other than the saddle issue the ride went great and I got faster each lap. I would have liked to have ridden my tri bike but I wasn't comfortable enough yet with it's shifting and gearing Transition 2
Comments: went down the wrong row and had to rack my bike from the other side and duck under the rack (good thing there were only 2 bikes on it). About 1 minute faster than last year. What would you do differently?: less time fumbling with the Garmin Run
Comments: the first mile is basically up hill and hurts really bad on bike-tired legs; I knew if I just kept it moving that it would eventually get better, and it did. After the turn around I picked a pace bunny and worked at catching up to her and then hung off of her shoulder as we pushed each other; with about 300m to go she started to fade and I think she fell off to walk. My hammies were cramping up and my quads were screaming on the final downhill but I kept on pushing through it. In the final sprint I started to make a passing move but knew that it wasn't happening. I got in solidly under my 9.5min/mile target, about 2:30 faster than last year. Negative splits. My best ever tri run! What would you do differently?: smile more :) Post race
Warm down: spent some time talking with members of my tri club and then stood in the lake for a while What limited your ability to perform faster: panicky feeling during the swim Event comments: well organized; good course; decent food Last updated: 2009-01-12 12:00 AM
|
|
United States
Set-Up, Inc
64F / 18C
Sunny
Overall Rank = 79/220
Age Group = 45-49F
Age Group Rank = 5/13
Kept well hydrated on Saturday and had fun "carboloading" a cheesecake desert at dinner.Pooped out and got into bed at 10:30. Slept well for a night before a tri.
Up around 6am; got dressed and had my usual race breakfast of Cheerios and yogurt smoothie. Packed and drove to the race site
Got body marked and then set up my transition area; I was first onto the rack and got what I thought to be a good position. Had a gel around 30 minutes before race time. Got into my wetsuit around 15 minutes before race time and got a short practice swim. Then hung out for my wave start.