Midwest Meltdown Triathlon - Short Course - Triathlon

A good swim, no wetsuits so I knew I'd be slow. Started on the outside this week to avoid any long course 2nd lap traffic. As it was our heat was small so it wouldn't have been a problem but it was kinda nice swimming by myself. Occasionally swapped breathing sides to check out traffic on my left and had to navigate around the occasional slower traffic also ran into some traffic at each turn which slowed them down a bit.

Implant air bags in my calves so my legs float, something like the old Nike pump shoes...

5OA/1Ag, Could probably hustle things up a bit when I'm at my bike but not much.

nothing

Rode fairly well, power was down by a negligible amount relative to last year and the wind was up so it was a couple tenths slower, didn't crack 24 mph this time;-(. Pretty much an individual time trial, most of the guys I was chasing in the race were in the heat before me so it was lonely and difficult to maintain a consistently high intensity.

I ran my wide ratio rear cassette that I've been racing with all season, 11-26, it works well on hilly courses where speed is constantly changing, in this race my maximum speed was less than 30 mph and the gaps between gears were annoying, I frequently had my choice between upper 90's or mid 80's when I prefer right at 90 rpm, should have gone with a 12-25 or 12-23, think those will be the right cassette for HyVee as well. This might have been magnified by legs being a little tired from riding yesterday.

Maintain better motivation/intensity and match equipment to the course better when I have the option. But realistically I thought last year was a breakthrough biking performance at this race and I managed to basically match it this year while treating the race as a training race so no complaints as my bike fitness is continuing to improve.

7AO/1AG, after dismounting shoes (still clipped in to pedals) were hitting the ground and spinning the crank while I ran, this has happened in the past and not a problem today but shoes have unclipped from this before, risky but don't have a good solution.

nothing

I had recognized Mike, the eventual overall winner running (his heat was 5 minutes ahead) as I rounded the last turn before transition on my bike, my initial assessment was, dang that looks like a lot more than 5 minutes. As I approached the turn while running my Garmin beeped and notified me that I had reached a recovery heart rate of 159 BPM, huh?, and it was stopped at 3 seconds, so i still had no idea where I was in the overall standings. Re-started Garmin and tried to keep running at a decent clip but similar to the bike I was all alone. Noticed the pace drop to slower than 7 min/mile on a couple inclines, but kept up a respectable average. Shortly after the 1 mile aid station I saw Mike and another guy I though might be near the front from the first heat, this put the gap at around 1 mile, not that it mattered, i just kept the needle slightly right of comfortably uncomfortable. At the end the gap was less than 30s each way with me in the middle.

run faster? I was hot and tired and had next weeks HyVee race in the back of my mind so there was no replication of last weeks banzai finish

none, just food, drink, and talk.


Almost 3 minutes slower than last year but most of that was the swim (2:32), bike and run were each within 15s. Considering that last year was wetsuit legal and a different swim course (possibly shorter), I peaked for the race last year, it was cooler cooler, no wind, and the way the heats played out I had a real strong rabbit to chase on the bike leg, I'm pretty content with this years performance.

Edit: Reflecting on this, note that 1st and 3rd overall had the 2 fastest swim times, I was ~2 minutes back with the 9th fastest swim and concluded that I should run & bike faster, hmmm...What's missing here Captain Obvious?


Good race, nice venue, well run.