EX2 Xterra - TriathlonOlympic

Last year I don't remember the front of the swim being this competitive, maybe because I ended up a few minutes back but trying to get a good start this year was very difficult. During the first few hundreds the guys at the front weren't concerned with swimming on top of each other, which wasn't so bad but they also weren't swimming straight, so they kept zig-zagging in front of my path. Once we got to the 1st sighting buoy, I had some free water and started to get in to a good rhythm. I did try to draft some on the way to the 1st turn buoy, but that guy started to veer off course, so I swam the rest of the way to the turn buoy on my own.

After making the first turn, I finally caught a break catching someone's feet who was going the perfect speed for me to just sit in there and swim easy for a bit. I was shocked at the difference in effort needed to maintain my speed as I definitely did bump a few feet before I realized how much I needed to ease up my effort. I rode those feet all the way in to shore.

After getting out and starting the second lap, I tried to catch on to some feet again, but once again this person wanted to veer off course, so I just decided to finish on my own since by now I was feeling great on the swim. I did a better job the second time around turning the buoy and cruised my way in to shore.

Great swim, made my time goal even though the run portion of the swim took at least 30 second longer than I was expecting, which puts my in the water speed at 1:40/100 yards. Feels pretty good to do that since I haven't been trying to swim super hard lately, but working on my efficiency.

Maybe start closer to the front, but I'm short and I wanted to get a push off the lake floor at the start.

Kind of hard to rank this transition since it is included in the 1st bike loop, but I do know that the two guys who entered T1 right before me didn't leave with me. Only issue was that my camelback was a bit twisted up on one of the straps, which later gave me a bit of a rash, but that is already gone. I still need to get better at getting my glove on while riding the bike.. not sure why I'm so bad at riding without hands these days, I remember it being so much easier as a kid, maybe kids bikes have super slack geometry.

I'm considering going sockless, but I think it will save me less than 5 seconds, but def cost me more than 5 seconds eventually on the run. Not sure what to do with that as I have gotten pretty good at putting socks on wet feet.

I was determined this race to try and push a hard pace I knew I could maintain. I think riding after swimming can get very deceptive as not only is the initial burn in your legs more than you're used to, it can take longer to really warm up and feel good on the bike. My legs burned like crazy as I pushed it during the first lap up the hills, but I did so something smart and made sure I didn't try to muscle up any of the climbs like I sometimes have been doing in training. I used my granny gear more than I have since I bought this bike and that was definitely the smart thing to do. Towards the end of the first loop I started to notice that my stomach was not enjoying the gatorade that I had in my camelback, and that I was still burping up my breakfast, so I made a decision to eat my gu pack during the road section at the beginning of the second lap and adjust my feeding as needed from there. I tried to drink some water from the aid stations, but that was actually harder than I thought, and my body didn't want any more substance in it. From that point on I didn't drink anything more than just to rinse out my mouth and pour the rest on my head.

I passed a lot of people during the first lap, but I also noticed that I wasn't going to meet my time goal, mostly because of a new section added to the bike leg, but I had forgot about that part at the time. I started to get a little silly thinking to myself that I was going to miss my time go, but I quickly snapped out of it after I realized I was doing very well in the overall standings, and probably better in my age group. Since I had a pretty decent swim, I knew that I didn't need to pass too many people to get out towards the front on the bike, but I did get a little discouraged when Paul passed me about 3/4 of the way though the first lap. During the second lap though I was nice and warmed up so even though it still burned to climb the mountain like before it wasn't quite as bad. I ended up passing the 2nd place guy early on in the 2nd lap and hammered on as much as I could.

Lapped traffic did make my 2nd lap a bit slower than it should have been though, I did a good job in the rocky sections of calling out my intentions and getting the people walking their bikes to get out of the way of the people riding. During the descent down the mountain there was too much lapped traffic and it wasn't smart to bomb it down, so that is the first part I definitely lost some time. Another rider in my age group caught up to me and another racer I had been riding with for most of the race before we hit the lakeside singletrack. In that last mile we also encountered a long line of people during one of the hardest sections to pass on as this was a bench-cut trail and not really any other space to pass, but I did eventually make it through by nicely asking people to get over and they did.. although I did get stopped once when someone couldn't make it up a log step, so that section cost me probably another 30 seconds.

I need more race experience to find out what kind of pain I can recover from early on during the bike and what kind of pain is truly burning my matches. This is something that is only going to come with experience and just going out and pushing your limits sometimes. It's hard to say now if I rested/recovered too much during the bike, but I think I've got some potential to have a very competitive bike, too bad my buddy Paul is only in his second year racing and his bike was 6 minutes faster than mine.. he's going to be making the 30-34 AG pretty tough in this area.

Very good T2, almost so fast I thought I had forgotten something. While I did pass the guy who finished the bike right in front of me (and his transition area was right next to mine, kind of funny) he did pass me after the first mile of the run.

nothing

When I got in to T2, I knew that Paul was way ahead of me. I had previously thought that I would have a chance to make a race out of it if I was within 1 minute at the end of the bike, but Paul is a total animal on the bike, and made up the 2 minutes I beat him on the swim before the first lap was finished on the bike. So the only other racer I knew of was behind me with about a mile to go on the bike, but I'm not sure he was on the same lap as me, and I think he got caught up passing people during the final mile.

So I just ran at a tempo pace, 3 step breaths on the flats, 2 on the hills which is my RPE when I do bricks. This run can be treacherous so I wasn't going to risk turning an ankle if I didn't need to so I just kept an eye on anyone possibly coming up behind me. Besides the two guys who passed me in the first mile, nobody really challenged me. Pierre passed me and I knew I couldn't run with him, then Frank later passed me before Evitt's revenge which surprised me since I thought he was going to be far ahead of me but he's been taking some time off from racing.

I saw nobody out there from the top of Evitt's until I got out on the road, so I didn't have a fire lit under me. I mailed it in for the finish, probably only running a 7 minute mile since there wasn't anyone even close behind me.

Next race I am going to push hard on the run to try and improve my overall standings, I know I'm a pretty good (not great) runner, so I am going to try and peg my next run for as good a time as I can get.

Now that I've got the overall results and splits.. I had a 43:00 run in me, which would have been enough to get 10th overall. Something to keep in mind, but do it smart and gain the speed on the less technical sections.

It didn't take me too long to cool down, which I realized later and after seeing my run split allowed me to realize I didn't push very hard on the run. So I walked around a bit and drank some water since I wasn't able to drink much of anything from about half-way through the bike. After I drank a bottle of water I went down to the lake and waded in it for a while.


I think I overdid my food in the few days leading up to the race. I started getting stomach issues and I could still tell my breakfast was in my stomach during the bike, so I pretty much stopped drinking my gatorade and tried to switch to water. When I tried to drink the water on the course, it was so cold, I wasn't really able to drink it as I would gasp from the cold when it hit my lips and I would end up breathing some of it in.


Once again, EX2 is the best race promoter in the region, good trails, good competition, good food spread afterwards, and good schwag.