Heritage Triathlon - TriathlonSprint

So I started swimming, knowing my toe was bleeding. I figured it would stop, and I would figure it out after the race. A little bit of a slugfest to start. Found a decent rhythm, despite lots of contact. Found a set of feet (#173) at the first turn buoy, and I followed him the entire rest of the swim. Pretty nice, although I was definitely swimming a bit slower just to stay on his feet. Not much else to say.

Pass #173 and try to find a faster swimmer to draft off of. Swim faster. This was about the same effort I put forth when I swim the HIM distance. I always freak out about swimming faster in a race because I've never done it before. Always concerned about conserving. Need to ditch this idea for a spring.

Decent transition. I haven't practiced mounting with shoes in, so I just put them on here.

Practice mounting to gain a few seconds.

Got up to speed pretty quick and immediately started blowing by people on the first hill. Steep, but short. I'm guilty of becoming much less of a triathlete and more of a cyclist. I like passing people on the bike, but I LOVE passing people on hills. It's like the purest form of strength when you blow somebody while climbing. And it sucks like nothing else to have somebody else blow by you and you're pushing as hard as you can.

Got into a nice rhythm when we hit the flats and kept the cadence around 100. I could tell I had big volume heading into this race, because my legs were sore. Especially the quads, which I knew would affect my climbing. But on the longer, more gradual hills I was still making up significant ground.

Hit the turnaround, and I unclipped my left foot. It's really easy to spin a 180 with one foot unclipped. But I really struggled to get it back in. Lost a little time here.

Back to the same old thing. Hit the dam hill and climbed it out of the saddle, which was probably a bad idea. It winded me pretty good, although I could tell I was just catching up with Clint F on that last flat on the dam. Strolled into transition probably 5 seconds behind him.

I forgot to air up my tires, so I bet I rode with only around 100 psi. This might've got me a few extra seconds. Other than this, I rode pretty well. Heck, I had the 2nd overall best split! :)

Took off my shoes on the last hill heading down to transition. They scraped a little as I could get my feet on them. Dismounted regularly. Switched to the running gear, and I was off. Got out of T2 just in front of Clint F.

Not much. Flying dismount might've saved me 3-4 seconds.

So Funderburke is on my tail, and I just knew he was going to catch me. I was pretty fatigued, but then I remembered he hasn't been running much due to injuries. I hoped this would allow me to hold him off.

Stopped at every aid station to walk and get water down. I just can't get it down when running. My new tri jersey was really causing me to heat up, so I pulled it up to my chest and ran with a pseudo-man-bra. Heh, exposing my fat for everybody else! :)

There was a quick right turn for a short out-and-back. I saw Eric, with Townsend right on his tail. I thought to myself that either Eric is having a bad day or Townsend is out of his mind. It was a little of both, I think. Turned out Eric had a crash and had significant road rash on his shoulder and back.

But I couldn't have been much more than a minute behind them, which really gave me a boost. They usually get out of the water way before me. Peeked back and saw that I had put some distance on Clint F. The kid in front of me was way too fast. So I stayed at a pace that I thought could hold off Clint F. I knew this would get me a top 10 finish, which is what I was hoping for. Turns out it did! :)

I haven't trained to run fast in months, due to longer-distance tri training. Maybe one day I'll really start trying to get faster as a runner...

Chatted with everybody some more. Hogged down a couple baked potatoes. Stayed away from the beer because I still needed to ride 60ish miles later in the day.


This race occurred at the end of my build week for Ironman. So I had quite a bit of volume heading into the race, and I could tell my legs were a bit fatigued. Especially during the run.

Still haven't really focused on getting faster running. Still only swimming twice a week. Maybe I'll get tired of riding my bike sometime and learn to run and swim faster.

I did come into this race around 177, which is the lightest I've ever raced at. This helped, but I still would like to get around 165ish...


Very pleased with this race. This time last year would've gotten me 2nd overall! Guess the cooler weather made that much of a difference. But I did improve over 6 minutes from last year, although I was just coming off a honeymoon last year too.

Jefferson doesn't have alot of frills, but that really doesn't bother me. All the unnecessary frills that people want are driving the price of racing higher and higher. I don't need a medal. I don't need a trophy. I just want to race, and Jefferson provides that on a pretty challenging sprint course.