Physical Therapy Plus Triathlon - TriathlonOlympic

As they called us down the boat ramp and into the water I positioned myself at the front of the pack as everyone else squeezed into the washing machine behind me. I always feel good about the swim because it is my strength, but once again I would be surprised at how much it would take out of me. Another note to self, evaluate swim training to see if I need to change things to accommodate a long distance continuous swim. I found myself swimming backstroke a few times, and breaststroke quite often to catch my breath. Although I was up near the top 5 swimmers, and we had a large lead over the peleton, I struggled to get through the swim. It seemed a bit long to me too. I know swim distances are hard to judge and every race is going to be different, so its just a fact of life. The Ohio turned out not to be a very bad river to swim in after all. It wasnt muddy, visibility was about 6-12 feet which is to be expected, and the water didnt taste all that bad. About the worst part was the Coast Guard boats that were idling near us kicking up fumes and exhaust. Not much fun while swimming when your few precious breaths are like sucking on a tailpipe. I found my way to the far red buoy, made the turn around and started my way 750 meters back to the start. I was in a no mans land by myself about 2 minutes behind the leader and about 2 minutes ahead of the next competitor. That gave me an extra boost seeing how far ahead I was of the rest of the pack, so I buckled down, established an odd but efficient rhythm and in about 26 minutes after the start I was hitting dry land. That is after I stopped and corrected Jackie's course ... she hadnt made the turn yet and was swimming diagonally across the river right at me!

Draft better. Work on long swims more often.

T1 took awhile. I was suited up in less than a minute, but needed about 1 more just to decide if that banana was going to come up. I held onto the bike rack and let things settle down.

No bananas

That race strategy paper I got off of www.beginnertriathlete.com has proved to be very helpful and I try to follow it very carefully. It paid off again on the bike ride as I took a few minutes to let my heart rate come back down from the swim. It didnt stay down for long though as the rain from overnight and the lack of sun had left the roads somewhat slick. Add that to narrow country roads and a bike course that wasnt completely closed, a section of the course spray painted with CAUTION, SLOW DOWN, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED and we had ourselves a bike race! Sections of the very hilly bike course are the same they are using for Ironman KY in August, though only about a quarter the distance. Some of the bigger hills jump right at you too. Not 15 minutes in are a series of out of the saddle climbs which if I played my cards right I would ascend very efficiently. Oddly enough, while I see my climbing skills as lacking (everyone who passed me in Philly did so on a climb) ... this was one of the best parts of my race this day! Every person I passed was during a climb. I would battle back and forth with a guy on a red Trek Equinox over most of the bike course passing him on the climbs and descents,, but he would get me right back on the flats. After the first two major climbs of the day, we enjoyed s long flat section followed by the biggest downhill and biggest uphill of the day. Alot of bikers out at this point for IM training cheering us on as we went. The roads were very nicely paved and despite the hills I was able to turn a 20+ MPH average for the course, and I only had to dodge one car from a potential head on collision. Bad news about that was the roads were still slick and when I tapped the brakes coming down the dangerous hill, I went into a skid ... right towards the car no less. Fate would be on my side thankfully and I was able to correct in time to yell something at the car as I went past.

Adjust bike fit!

Downhill finish, on wet asphalt, in bike shoes?? I almost wiped out and sent my bike into the river.

The run is where the battle began in my head. All the numerous tricks you play in your head to keep going ... singing songs, counting trees, trying to do complex math ... I was pulling them all out. I was slow coming out, and despite the optimistic outlook of the race director, the course, was NOT flat. A few hills are too many for me on a 10K. Everything was going well, I took my time to walk through one of the water stops to catch my breath once and another time to take a gel ... Raspberry Creme is DELICIOUS just for your FYI! After making it about 4 miles into the run, high fiving Shawn and Jackie, I turned around to see how I was positioned. All day I had only been passed by 1 person on the bike and 1 on the run, and knew I was in about 7th or 8th place over all. I was gunning for a top 3 position in my Age Group. When I turned around this time, a challenger appeared. A ghostly white figure, wearing speedos and a white see through tank top was closing in on me. I figured if I had a 5 minute headstart I could meet my goal of a podium finish and possibly a new 10K PR. As I saw the guy closing in on that I realized that he might be in my age group and vowed it would not happen. Looking at my Garmin training logs I see that right about mile 4.5 I dropped the hammer as much as I could and tried to hold him off. As I reached the one mile to go turnaround I knew I had timed me energy right and felt like I had just enough gas in the tank.



Then all of a sudden ... up ahead ... I see the guy that passed me on the bike. Wait, was I getting ready to make a pass on the run? This might be a first. I did it .. in all fairness, this guy completely bonked. He had just run out of gas as I went flying past. Then to make things even better, the last mile was on grass ... where I do 90% of my training runs. I hunkered down and turned in my 3 fastest quarter mile splits of the race. I tried to sneak across the finish at 2:29,59, but had to settle for 2:30.00.

Got stretched out at the PT tent. Man that back stretch he had me doing was unbelievable!!


Endurance during the swim was astonishingly lacking.


Great race, alot of fun on a very challenging course. In the end I would end up finishing 1st in my age group, 6th over all and setting a new PR in the 10K 46:44. Today was indeed a good day.