Musselman Half-Iron Triathlon - Triathlon1/2 Ironman

I came into this race expecting a swim PR. I have focused on the swim and had some really nice OWS in practice the past couple of weeks easily swimming in the 1:45 range. Arriving in the park and seeing the wind and lake, I realized Mother Nature said screw your PR, Im still in charge. Oh well, we all swim in the same lake.
The first leg is a different direction from past years and is barely waiste deep to the first turn bouy. Many walkers through here, but I felt it best to swim.
From there we turn southeast directly into the 20 mph head wind and the strong chop. Tough to breath without catching a wave, and at times felt as I was swimming just to keep from going backwards. Even here though I started catching people from prior waves. Difficult at best to sight so I think I wandered a bit.
Finally reach the turn back north, and get a bit of a push into the canal, but still choppy. Didn't think I would ever get to the safe confines of the canal, which is normally the worse part of the swim, but it was nice to get into some flat water and pick up the pace.
Cant say I was happy with the swim performance, but I can't control the weather.

Pick a pook swim.

The swim took a lot out of me. Took more time than I should.

The first 12 - 15 miles are south into the wind. The weather report said the winds were 20 - 22 sustained with gusts to 28. My helmet is an aero helmet with a flip down visor. The wind caught it about 10 miles in and ripped it off. I tried to push the pace, but I also had on a deeper wheel than I should have and found at times I felt like a kite being pushed around. In hindsight I should have switched wheels, but the forecast was for 8 - 10 mph.
Turning east was a relief and then tuning north on 414 was a thrill to get a slight downhill with that tailwind. Made up some of the time here, just wasn't long enough.
I was also dealing with a nagging lower back soreness. I wish I could figure this out as sometimes it is there other times it isn't. I stopped about halfway to use the porto potty, but also to stretch out the lower back. I wish they had more than one as the girl that just beat me to it couldn't get in and out of her one peice tri suit.
Down hill to the lake was the normal free speed which was nice but then it was back into the wind along Cayuga Lake before the climb up off the lake, About the top of the hill it started raining, at times hard. Not really an issue until we got back to Romulus and the downhills are pretty steep with some tight turns. Dry conditions we get a lot of free speed, wet with a bunch of other bikes around and it gets pretty treachorous in my opinion. I did get passed some but I got all those positions back as soon as we got into the park heading back north.
Lots of free speed back to the park with the nice tail wind that I had been cussing most of the morning. I'll take it though after the ass kicking it gave me up to that point.

My bike training hasn't been as good as it was last year and could use some work.

Just slow

Move faster

Took off running the desired race pace up to mile 3 where there is a steep up hill. With the rain, I took the stair option instead of the grass. Picked back up to the race pace again and was maintaining +/- 8:45 pace. Did well with this through the next 3 or 4 miles to the gravel farm path up the hill. Fully intended to power walk this as it is about as fast for this grade.
At the top right back to pace and was moving along with my goal of breaking 2 hours, hopefully 1:55.
Funny thing that has never impacted me before (of course I have struggled on the run at Musselman so I probably wasn't ever in this position before) but there are some nice downhills from miles 8 - 10 and although I did ok running down them, I really struggled with the pace after that. Once I hit the flats, no matter how hard I tried I couldn't better the pace at all. Finished hard, but was just over 2 hours.

My running has been hot and cold this year. It has been better than my bike training but still not up to where it needs to be. I think the sprint a couple of weeks ago probably put me behind some on the number of over runs. Truthfully I would have probably been better off doing the HIM in Tupper Lake.

Grabbed a little fruit, packed up and got out of there as it was raining and I was getting cold


Lifes distractions this year has my training about a step behind last years. It is looking better, but it is tough to catch up.


These guys just do it right!