EX2 Xterra - TriathlonOther

It seems as though I did not set up my goggles properly for the first lap. I guess with the anti-fog, I should just go ahead and wet them as I normally would instead of putting them on dry. My goggles fogged up after only about 100-150 yards and navigation started to get tricky. Because I'm not starting out in the front I'm not exactly trusting these guys to have good navigation skills, so I did stop more than I should have to make sure I was on course. This was a time I really noticed how stopping in OW really kills your rhythm/speed, it seemed to take about 5 strokes or so to get up to speed, and then I kept bumping in to the guy in front of me's feet.

I did a much better job this time around of gauging/limiting my effort, which was perfect for this race. After coming out of the water at the end of the first lap, I took off my goggles for a bit and rinsed them out, but I was never able to get them to go back on perfectly and ended up with one side leaking during the second lap, but at least I could spot! During the second lap, I was doing much better about keeping up my rhythm, and it went by without too many hitches. I still bumped in to a few too many (slower mind you) people in front of me, and I ended up coming out of the water with someone who was actually a slower swimmer than I was, but he actually swam the whole time instead of my intermittent stops. So out of the water this time and run over to transition. Pierre was right behind me the whole time as I could hear everyone cheering him on as we were coming up there. After we crossed the timing line I joked with him that this would be the last that I saw him and wished him luck on the rest of the race.

Wet goggles during warm up.

SWIM AROUND SLOWER SWIMMERS. I think I also need to start more towards the front, I think I'm not that far away from putting in a good first 200 and easing in to an easier stroke in a race. I think just that and the passing thing would give me at least 1 minute on my time.

I'd say this was a good transition for me. I am still using a hydration pack since I am not very good at getting a water bottle back in the cage while on the trails, so that adds a little bit of time. Plus I am not very good yet at getting my gloves on while riding, so I put them on while in transition. I came out of there at exactly the same time as Pierre, and he did not put on his gloves until after he got going on the bike. I think I did better this time around because I noticed I can get on my shoes in much the same way we get on our running shoes. Slip them on then tighten them down on the bike.

Not sure.. I have been eyeing a pair of SIDI tri specific mtb shoes to see if I can start going sockless and a flying mount, but $350 to shave some seconds off of T1 seems a bit extreme, and I'll have to put my socks on sometime since I can't get my running shoes on barefoot because of the way they're laced.

This was a pretty solid bike for me. I wish it didn't take me as long to recover from the swim, but I did a good job of keeping the effort at a sustainable level and finally got in a groove about 3/4 of the way though the first lap. I did have to make a few passes in the singletrack on the first lap, but both people were nice enough to let me by when I asked.
The key this time around was keeping from blowing my wad on evitt's revenge, I noticed that most people were using this technique as well and I was foolish to try and speed up this hill last year and in training. I nailed the downhill on the first lap and was all alone for the rest of that lap until after coming through the timing area and starting back on the road climb over to the dam. Someone who had commented on my camelback on the first lap since he had the same one asked me if I was a downhiller since I put a big gap on him during that downhill section, so I gave him a few pointers and in return he gave me a pull up the rest of the hill.
I was aggressive to get in the single track on the second loop and put on the jets for the last section of road before the stair entrance to the singletrack. I ripped up the trails this time because there was nobody in front of me and it was NICE. When coming out of that section, the guy told me he just learned a lot about how to ride that section. Turns out he is a road convert so may not have been used to turning that often, but he was a fitter biker and this is where the trails go up and he was on his way.
Second lap I was doing a pretty good job again, although I slipped this time on evitt's revenge, had to run a bit, but was able to get back on my bike after letting a few people who were riding get through. Some of them weren't as fast as I on the next quick descent, but we came up on the toughest of the rock gardens and the guys in front of me didn't know that the outside line was the smoothest. I had to be on my toes though as one guy in front of me nearly came in to my line after stopping, and I was able to get a walker to clear out the good line on the next climb.. thank goodness we talked about that during the pre-race briefing.
It was pretty uneventful for the rest of the lap, Dr. Kathy passed me right towards the end of the climb to the top of the hill, and I was close behind her, but when the trail went down she was out of sight in no time. At the entrance to the lakeside loop, I had caught up to a few riders and we entered the single track. At the first turn, the surface is gravel, and one of the guys wiped out in front of me (he was also in my age group) so I stopped to make sure that he was o.k. He said he was fine, and I asked again if he was sure, he said yes so I got on my way, but two other riders had already come up on me and gotten ahead of me.. ugh. So I simply followed them in to transition as it was not worth it to try and pass with not much left on the bike course.

Not sure, I am wondering if I could have gone a bit harder, but I don't have the experience to know right now. I know I wanted to go sub 80 minutes and have enough juice for the run, and I did both of those things, so it was a successful bike.

So these racks were LOW.. and I knocked my rack over putting my bike in! now it is kind of funny, and I wasn't the only one to have it happen. I should have turned my bike sideways to get my seat under the rack, but I wasn't thinking about that.

Otherwise it was a fast transition, so fast I thought I had forgotten things, I almost thought I still had on my bike helmet as I exited the transition area.

not knock over the racks, I tried to fix it at first and eventually realized that wasn't going to happen so I called some people over to help out and they got it situated.

Man, this was a pretty exciting run. Looking at the results after the fact, it is funny to see the guy I was shadowing the whole run basically ran the exact same race as I did. If I hadn't stopped for the guy who fell in front of me, we would have come in to T2 at exactly the same time.
For the first few miles of this run I wanted to keep myself cool and collected, taking the advice Conrad gave about saving yourself for the last 3k of the race and this is what allowed me to almost catch my nemesis. During this run I would slowly catch up to the guy in front of me with a 30 on his calf, only to have him seriously gap me any time we started to run downhill. I'm still very cautious on my ankle after that sprain this past spring, so I was taking it easy, while this guy was romping down these hills and leaping like a billy goat through the most technical section of the trail. I caught up to him since he walked the aid station after evitt's revenge, but since I had my hydration on my belt and I was feeling great, I kept on moving, only to have him gap me again as we started down the mountain. My goal from there was to keep cautious and try to keep him in sight.
Eventually though, I did lose him, but after we started to make our way back up the near vertical climb I noticed someone familiar up at the top of the hill. Dr. Kathy was just ahead, so I knew I was running a good race as she is pretty damn fast so I screamed out to her that she better not let me catch up to her (even though she was 3 minutes ahead). So after scaling the boulders, and getting to the top of the hill, I gave my head a nice dousing from my fuel belt and got on my way.
Once we popped out of the woods, I could see Dr. Kathy and the guy I had been chasing the whole run and I told myself, the pain is only temporary, you have done this before, just GO! I put on the jets, and slowly started to catch up to Dr. Kathy. On my way to reeling in my good chiro, I did overtake one of the 25-29 guys who had passed me about a mile and a half in to the run. This section of the run was smooth and mostly downhill, so i kept up the pace, knowing that the end was near and that I needed to really hump it to make my 2:30 time goal. Finally with about 2-300 yards left, I caught up to Kathy and wished her well and kept on going as I still had about 10 yards to go to catch up to my guy. I know he could hear me breathing down his neck since at this time I was running HARD, like 5k pace and breathing heavily. He later told me was was keeping something in the tank since he knew I was back there and we had about a 100 yard sprint in to the finish. I might have been able to take him if it was a straight shot, but right before the timing line, there's a sharp right turn and he did the smart thing and took the inside line sealing off his place. I tried my hardest to pass him after that, but he was still able to stay ahead of me. It was so close in fact that the timing people asked us to determine who was the winner, I knew I never passed him and immediately said that he was.
Not long after that there was another guy in our age group who came up and congratulated us, I can see there was someone about 30 seconds back who was probably trying to run us both down and witnessed the whole thing, but after that i was toast! Plus we had to get out of the way because the finish line is also the transition area and other people were still finishing their bike.

Nothing really.. I want to think about maybe going at a faster pace earlier, but would I have been able to finish as strong without leaving something in the tank?

Walked around and drank a gatorade, chatted with a few of the other 30-34 guys as I was shocked to see how strong the age group was this year. Last year my time would have got me 2nd place in my AG, but I think this is a lot better as I probably would not have made the time I did without trying to run someone down. After that I walked over to the lake and walked around in the water for a bit, came back to the transition area and changed clothes and ate some of the awesome grub provided to us.


Getting hurt in March/April.. I'm still only at about 20 miles per week running right now, but considering the winter I had a small set back like that was totally acceptable.


EX2 Rocks!!!