Michigan Triathlon Championship - Olympic Course - TriathlonOlympic

First 1/4 mile of the swim was unbelievably shallow. Many were combined swimming, wading and dolphin diving for the first 1/4 mile or so. Then rounded a buoy and water got deeper. Right before the second buoy the swim went out into the current of the Detroit River. It went from easy swimming to "Holy Cow!" I am killing myself to swim against the current and get around this buoy. Once you rounded the buoy it was about 1/2 mile directly down river with the current and I have never swam faster. This was fun. There was a lot more chop and waves than could be seen from shore. When you rounded the third buoy it was about 50 yards of swimming across the current that was pretty hard. Then back in to sheltered water. I then swam in to a weed bed that was amazing. More weeds than water. It was crazy. This was obviously the wrong line because about 1/2 the racers said they had clear water here and 1/2 were like me and fought with the weeds. Very shallow last 50 yards, so I stood up and walked/ran out of the water.

Miss the weed beds. Go out a little harder.

Because this was a two transition race you had to take an extra few seconds to put all of your stuff into a bag to be transported to T2.

I left my shoes attached to my bike again but it did not work nearly as well this time as last time. While I was running with my bike my left pedal spun around to the 3:00 position which was 180 degrees opposite of where I wanted it. I jumped on the bike instead of stepping on to the bike as a result. Then I looked down to find my pedal and promptly ran over a cone and was jsut about ejected from my bike. If anyone was video taping this, I am now one of those guys with a really expensive bike that looked like a total ding-dong while getting on it.

Last race the shoes on the pedals worked great. This time not so much. May have to explore rubber banding the shoes so they don't spin.

This is an extremely fast bike and I pushed it hard.

1/2 of the race is down wind and 1/2 is up wind more or less.

I tried to keep the watts between 220-230. When the wind was at my back I was going 25-28 mph. Wind in my face, 22ish. This course was crazy because no one rode on the right. You had to pass wherever you could. There were times that I was overtaking people going twice as fast as they were.

I think the race directors kind of dropped the ball here. They need to emphasize to people that unless you are passing you should stay as far to the right as possible. The way that everyone was riding all over the place it is lucky that there were no catastrophic accidents.

Course was approximately 2K short according to people in the know. I did not get my PT functioning until at least a mile + into the race so I can't comment. It was probably short. Wish it weren't so. I would like to be able to say I broke an hour for 40K>

No socks again. Had just a little trouble getting my shoes on. Speed laces are just a little too tight.

For some reason all of the relay people were congregated around my rack in T2. I had to ask people to move so I could rack my bike and get to my shoes.

Loosen speed laces.

Getting off of the bike my calves felt like I had two boulders under the skin. I was afraid that I had over cooked the bike and that the run was not going to go well but it seemed like I was able to run fast so I just kept going and everything got better within a mile or so.

My goal was not to get passed but at about the 1.5 mile mark a really fast 23 year old came by me. I tried to hang with him and never lost sight of him but I sure could not out run this guy.

I paced this well and got faster with each mile. I ran the last 1.7 miles or so at 5:50-6:00 pace. This run was about 0.35 miles long by my garmin (and everyone elses as well). When I crossed 5.2 miles by garmin I really kicked it to finish the last mile strong. When 6.2 miles came and went (in less than 40 minutes-one of my season goals) on the garmin the finish line was not even in sight. I just kept pushing and finished strong. Almost caught a local guy that has traditionally been way faster than me so I think I am making progress. He is a really fast runner and I ran almost two minutes faster than him.

A lot of stretching and calories


I would have loved to pick up my AG award but two plus hours after I finished there was no sign of the awards being handed out. I needed to get home to contribute to family activities so I had to bug out.

I wish that they would do the awards a little more expediantly but there are different philosophies on this. Not worth the $10 I would have to pay to have it shipped to me, but I would have liked to have it :)