Stone Harbor Triathlon - TriathlonSprint

Once the cannon went off I sprinted really hard to the first turn. I made the turn and pretty much went under the buoy as I was that close. Perfect turn. Kept the pace and turnover and legs pretty high to the next turn and about half way down the back stretch. Overall a great swim. Probably put more than 30 yards on the closest guy to me in the Elite wave. Climbed up the ladder and took off for my bike rack.

Nothing. Overall one of the best swims I have had this year.

Other than the suit getting stuck on my heels again it was an ok transition. Got out on the bike fairly quickly and was rolling ok. The road out to the main course was bumpy so I didn't get my feet in my shoes until I was out on the main course. Not a big deal.

Nothing...maybe sprint a little harder to the bike. But all in all I am ok with my times.

I felt ok for the first loop but I could not get my HR to settle at all. I was breathing really hard and could not drink at all. So I just kept on trying to take deep breaths and get settled. The humidity was pretty tough down there so I am wondering if that had anything to do with it.

Felt so so on the first loop and was all by myself. Saw that the 2nd place guy was about 5 blocks back and I was ok with this. I figured it would be probably the end of the third loop where he would catch me.

Then disaster struck. The police escort car just kept on going at the north end turn around and no one was standing there to tell me to turn and there were no cones or markers. That sucked. I went two blocks too far and the cop finally turned left. I followed and looked up and saw that the 2nd place guy was now 3 blocks up on me. Very discouraging at that point since I was working so hard to get the lead to where I though I was safe. He was nice enough to slow down a bit for me and wait and then that was it. My mind was kind of out of it. He put the hammer down and just rode away from me. Nothing I could do. He just took off. On the last lap he really stretched the lead out.

Overall not a great ride but some how I managed the 2nd fastest bike split.


Pay attention to the god dam pre race meeting and not follow the cop car.

Good transition. Shoes on pretty quickly.

Ran out of T2 and my wife and father in law where pretty close to the run start. The let me know that I was 35 seconds down at that point.

Nada

Right off I was not really sure what I was going to do. I saw two runners pretty far ahead up the road and though how the hell is that possible. Only one guy passed me on the bike.

About 1/2 mile in I caught the first guy and clearly could see his race number was like 281 or something. Clearly didn't do the right amount of loops on the bike course. I think he was a little embarrassed about that face that he was ahead of the race leaders. The look on his face was priceless.

So I set my sights on the leader and was really catching him quickly. I was not too happy about that. Again I was trying to play out in my mind what I was going to do. In Philly I caught him and passed and dropped him right away. Looking back I think I should have taken the same approach and tried early on to just make it tough for him to stay with me. The head wind was in our faces and that was tough. I am not going to lie. I was working harder than I wanted to as well. So I guess the combination of things possibly helped me make race time choices. Then the real race began.

We ran literally shoulder to shoulder for 2.5 miles. We were so close that I could hear his breathing better than I could hear my own. I ran right through the aid station and didn’t take anything. I just wanted to keep moving. Got to the turnaround and almost called it quits. I was hurting really bad. The next segment up to the mile 2 marker just felt like it was taking for ever. Got there and then we really started racing. As though we weren’t racing before now the pace really took off. I would say we were running 5:30 pace for that last mile hands down. Again shoulder to shoulder. Made the left turn onto the across town stretch and the pace was blistering. With one block to go before the last turn into the shoot I saw the road had a slight incline in it and I decided to make a move and really pick up my turnover and see if I could run away from him. I did for about 5 seconds and he responded. So we were back even again. With about 30 yards to so to go he just put a final kick in and I had nothing left. I dug as deep as possible but as the time tells it was a 1 second separation.

Crossed the timing mat and could not see anything except maybe a tunnel of vision in front of me. My breathing was as bad as it has ever been and if I sat down I thought for sure I was going to pass out. Just completely covered in goose bumps and feeling like death. Walked over to the shower on the side of the building and just stood there to cool off. Finally 2 minutes later I came around. Very very tough race.


I have no clue. It's going to take some time to figure this one out. Probably nothing as I did my best with what I had to work with today. Definitly not my best performance. My pace was slower than the 10K at the Philly OLY. Really not sure.

Death stomp to the showers. Light stretching and lots of conversation with the 1st (Delirious comment edit) place guy about how tought the run was.


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Over all a great race. Rob Hicks puts on a great race for this event. The course is super fun and very fast. The awards and after race breakfast is in the Yacht club and is just outstanding. Very well run and a nice change of pace from some of the bigger races I have been doing.