Tri-America Triathlon Series - Hampton - Sprint Di - TriathlonSprint

Good swim for me. The conditions were calm and I was able to settle into my swim almost immediately with minimal bumping. I held a nice straight line to the first turn buoy and felt smooth and relaxed. The wetsuit even felt comfortable. After the final turn we headed back towards the beach and the current was carrying us away from where we needed to end up so it took a bit of extra work over the final 200m. Oh yeah...jellyfish the size of dinner plates everywhere! Anyone who didn't have a full wetsuit ended up with a lot of stings. I got some on my hand but nothing major.

I probably could have pushed just a bit harder and still been okay coming out of the water. Catching a draft would have helped but I felt comfortable on my own so I didn't want to screw that up by focusing on somewhone else.

Transition went smooth. this was the first time I've been ablt to get out of my wetsuit without problems getting the legs off. There is about 200m of beach to run before getting into transition so that accounts for some of the time.

A very strong ride for me. I didn't know what to expect after riding the century yesterday but I managed to push the bike hard without getting too much talk-back from my legs. I settled into the aerobars and just started to churn away. I sure felt fast on the new Javelin with my disc and aero helmet. I had to prove I was worthy of that machine. I had a blast blowing by people constantly...I've never in my life repeated the same phrase (ON YOUR LEFT!) so many times. There were a couple of places where I held back slightly and gave my legs a bit of rest. Typically if I was pushing hard and saw my speed push past 23mph I'd hold steady there. There were a couple of places where either the wind or roads made 24+ mph feel relatively easy and I let it flow over those sections. I figure I might have given up 25-20sec total by holding back in places but overall I really pushed the bike and the intensity level was just about perfect for me on that day.

Not ride 100 miles the day before :)

I thought about trying the running dismount but opted to come to a stop and jump off rather than risk a crash. I still had a pretty fast dismount and run to transition...they got a great pic that I'll post. Dan was working the bike dismount and told me I was the 3rd guy in...turns out I was 4th in but that's no matter. It was really cool coming into a completely empty transition area, racking my bike and blazing out knowing there were only a few guys out there in front of me. i also had a great rack location. It was a straight shot from bike in to run out and I was racked literally 10ft from the run out.

I fumbled my shoes slightly but that probably only cost me 5sec.

Hot and hard...it hurt. The course was obviously way short of 5k. I had th fastest run split of the day but there is no way I ran 15:12 for 5k. I took my first split at the 1 mile mark at 5:40...no way to know if that was a real mile or not.

Coming out of transition I saw one guy about 150m ahead and I quickly ate him up. Then it was a long straight shot to the turn-around but I could see abother guy maybe 400m ahead. That's toofar for me to focus on running him down so I just stuck with my race and listened to my body. I figured either I'm strong enough to catch him or not but actually trying to catch him probably would have been a bad idea. Just past the mile mark I passed the 1st place guy going the other way...he had maybe 600m on me and there was no way I was catching him. Turns out I ran 50sec faster than him but he out-swam me by over 2 min. Making the final push for the finish the 2nd place guy was only 100m ahead but we had maybe only 400m to go and I had come to peace with the fact that I'd take 3rd overall. Then I saw the finish and somehow convinved myself to dig deep. I ended up flying by him over the last 100m to take 2nd overall. He just didn't have an answer to the kick and I probably covered 150m in thesame time he went that last 100m.

Again, I'm thinking that century ride yesterday probably didn't help me run faster.

The usual...stagger around and grovel for water.


Last year I swore I'd never do this race again. With my accident this season and Timberman coming up I really wanted to get a race under my belt and this was the only easy option since it's local. I was also hoping to have a different opinion after giving them a 2nd chance. No luck. I'll say it again...I'm never doing this race again. The course was safe and well-marked and the volunteers were all very nice and helpful but the overall organization and quality of the event was poor.