Cactus Challenge Triathlon - Olympic - TriathlonOlympic

One of these days I'll get the hang of drafting during the swim and make some use of it. Once we passed about 600 yards or so, I felt like I was out there damn near on my own. I could see other heads in the water, but not seemed very close to me.

Not much. It was a decent swim overall.

Good transistion. It was a long way from the shore up to the racks, so there was plenty of time to get cap, goggles, etc. off. The racks were assigned and I was lucky to be on one just a couple away from the bike entrance/exit.

Nothing.

Today's word of the day, boys and girls, is rolling. Rolling is useful in several fun phrases like rolling hills, rolling draft, and rolling resistance. All three of these phrases contributed to posting a 2 mph faster bike split than the Texas Tri 2 weeks ago, despite my average wattage being 7% lower today. Rolling hills were what we dealt with today and they help your speed over steeper climbs and descents. I was in the bottom gear for only a short time twice on each lap. Rolling draft is what you get when you have near 1000 athletes out on a 6-mile loop. You can roll from one rider to the next and get your full 15 second draft off of each one. I was actually expecting the advantage from this to be greater, but the benefit was probably minimal because it wasn't as congested as I thought it would be. CapTex will be a different story. Rolling resistance is what you get when you don't replace your tires often enough and they get a flat spot across the contact patch. More than anything else, I think this contributed to my improved speed today. I put new tires on the bike last night and I was pretty shocked by exactly how worn the old tire was when comparing it to the new.

If I wanted to be faster, I wouldn't ride 148 miles in the week leading up to the race!

Nice quick T2. I should have racked my bike by the bars when I came in. I wasted probably 5 seconds hanging it back up by the seat. That's how I had it to begin with and it never crossed my mind to do it differently on my return.

I pulled on my shoes and was off.

The run was interesting. You had to pay attention to your footing because the ground was uneven in spots. It wasn't terrible, but just enough to throw you off if you weren't looking.

I saw RGRBILL coming back by me where the course does a u-turn. He looked strong.

The last 1/2 mile of the loop is killer because you have to pay back a bunch of elevation that you came down just prior to that. It's just a cruel way to finish off the run and doing it twice really sucked.

I did manage to pass 2 guys in my AG in the last mile, which is something I never do. I expected them to check out my calf and then pick up their pace, but neither did. It's a good thing, too, because I didn't have anything I could have responded with if they had gone back by me.

Not much of one. Got the cold towel at the finish and grabbed some pizza. Talked with Bill a bit after the race, and then headed home to get some chores done.


Lots of training this week.


The race starting late was a distraction and the RD should have just stepped up and apologized instead of trying to blame everyone else. Once things got going, it was a nice race. There were lots of volunteers, post-race was decent. I'll probably do it again.