Katy Triathlon at Firethorne - TriathlonSprint

Since I've swam once in the last two months, I've got no basis to complain about this swim. I figured I'd be happy with anything under 10-minutes.

Cold weather, so I took a little extra time to dry off. Also went for a cycling jacket for the ride. The zipper on my jacket is "iffy" and took 2 or 3 tries to get zipped, which cost a little time.

Zipper practice?

I'm a little disappointed in this ride. It's my slowest sprint bike leg of the year by a fair amount. Not sure what happened, except I didn't feel like I had much power on Sunday. Oh well. I didn't wear the HR strap, so pace was by RPE. Maybe I should go back to the HR to have a number to push towards?

My big frustration on the bike leg was blatent cheating by one of the high school kids wearing a tri-suit with orange trim. He had his name stenciled on his suit, but I can't remember what it was. I passed him about 2 miles into the bike leg, and he grabbed a hold of my wheel and hung tight for almost 3-miles. I know someone behind you shouldn't affect how you ride, but the sun was casting the shadows forward, and I could see him glued to me wheel. ARGH! I turned around and glared at him a few times, but that didn't seem to do anything. Finally, I sat up and asked him if he knew this was a non-drafting race. He said yes, and went on ahead of me after I just coasted for 15 or 20 seconds. I let him get about 50-yards ahead then hammered past him and dropped him. About 10-minutes later, a faster rider passed me and this same kid had grabbed onto his wheel. I watched him stuck to this other guy for about 2-miles until the other guy shook him off.

I ended up passing him again, but I think we finished the bike leg pretty close together. The sad part about this was I saw several other kids wearing this same kit, so they must be part of a club or team. If so, that organization has some real integrity issues they need to deal with. Hopefully this is just a bad apple and not a problem with the organization. It's pretty sad to see anyone blatently cheating. It's something I really don't understand.....why sign up for the race if you're not going to follow the rules?



Hammer harder on the bike and quit letting others impact my race.

Good run for me. I felt good and built negative splits for all three miles. I passed several guys in my age group, with the last being at about the 2-mile mark. I lost track of him and thought I had a solid lead built, but he passed me in the chute and beat me by 1-second. Maybe I need to start paying attention and push until the end.

Maintain intensity until the end and don't get beat at the wire.

This is a great sprint to end the year on.