Heart of the Lakes Triathlon - TriathlonLong Course

When the gun went off I hit my watch timer, and follwed the one person that I knew I wanted to draft off of into the water. I was able to hang onto his feet for the first 100 yards or so, and then that was it. I started at the front of the 50+ person wave so I could get clean water to swim in, and even though I am not the quickest swimmer, I knew that if I started in the middle/back, it would be hard to catch the feet of anyone who I would be able to draft off of.

I got to the first bouy and felt OK, nothing great, but nothing horrible. I knew that my time was not going to be blazing, but hoped for the best. I started heading back into shore and caught up to a couple of people from prior waves, and was able to swim around them with little issue.

Overall my navigation was spot on, and I did not tend to veer one way or the other.

Swim more sprints, and get my turn over rate to be higher and more efficient.

Considering that I had to run almost 3 city blocks for this transition, not to mention that I had to run about 150 yards from the lake, this is a good time for me. I was anticipating about 2 minutes, so right on target.

Nothing

Let me first start out by saying that this is a new PR for me in terms of race speed. My previous had been 22.15, and this was 23mph!

Due to road construction, this is a different bike course from what they normally have. This one was a bit more on the hilly side than the previous course so I think my goal time of 52 minutes was probably not realistic.

I was in wave 9, which meant that I had a lot of people to pass on the bike. There were 2 individuals that I knew would beat me out of the water, and I anticipated catching them on the bike.

Well, I ended up catching one of them around mile 12, and even though I put in a hard steady effort to drop him, he stayed with me and we played cat and mouse for the remainder of the ride. As I got to my rack I saw the other guy heading out of T2 so I knew that he had a great swim and a strong bike. The guy I beat off the bike racked his bike with in about 15 seconds of me. I beat him out of transition, and since my lead of 2-3 minutes did not happen since I was not able to drop him on the bike course, he passed me about 1/4 mile into the run as he is a much faster runner than I am

Push harder??

See above! :)

Nothing, very quick T2 since I had a long ways to run

So back to my story about the guy that I wanted to catch...I thought I would be able to catch the guy that I saw running out of T2 as he had ran 7:30's in the past few races.

I kept pushing hard, and got to the 2 mile mark at 14:05, pretty much right on the 7:00/mile pace that I wanted. The 3rd mile was a little slower at 7:28 as there was a little uphill to it, but I figured I would make it up. To this point I still had not seen the Guy from T2, and was starting to get a little discouraged.

Mile 4 came in at 6:48, and I was happy that I was able to put some time back in the bank, however, there was no sight of the Guy from T2. At the start of mile 5, I was pased by a guy that was in my AG and that pretty much demolished me, as I thought that if I could catch the guy from T2, I would have run myself into 3rd, now I knew that the best I could do was 4th. By this point I had resolved to finishing solid and just running my race and finishing strong.

Well, I never saw the guy from T2, and finished the race in 6th/23 in my AG, so not horrible, but about 3 spots down from where I expected as there was 1 other guy in my AG who's bike I did not see coming into T2.

As it turns out the Guy from T2 had an amazing race in all 3 categories. He even ended up running 6:39's, so either the last few races were flukes, or he ran himself silly today. Either way, he had a great race, and I did make a point to tell him that after the day was over.

Push harder??

walked around, got some water and gatorade


just not my day


I love this race, and will be coming back to it every year