Pewaukee Triathlon - TriathlonSprint

All in all this was a solid swim for me, especially since I did it sans wetsuit. The only way I could have improved my time much would have been to swim over people instead of around them-- and I had plenty of opportunity to do that. There were a ton of human buoys out there, especially around the turn buoy. In fact, the lifeguards had to fish out a ton of people even before the turn-- guess some folks didn't take a 1/4-mile swim too seriously. My navigation was right on even into the bright sunshine on the return, and my stroke waqs strong throughout. Also, the new goggles worked great.

Not much. I guess if I really wanted a great swim time, I'd wear my wetsuit, but I just didn't think it was worth the tradeoff in transition.

Yes, my transition times kind of blew. But that had more to do with my racking placement within the large transition area than it did with me dragging azz. The one thing that added time in T1 was putting on my socks, which I normally wouldn't do for a sprint. However, I didn't want to risk getting any blisters with my HIM coming up next weekend.

Not wear socks. Oh, and register for the race earlier so I get a better rack placement.

Hey, what do you know? I really popped off a decent ride here, and I'm quite happy with my rank in my age group-- that's a huge improvement over previous races and last year. I was just flying past the road clutter out there and I recall only being passed by two riders. There's no question I've built up a better engine-- now I'm looking forward to getting a little faster chasis beneath it :) I can't wait for my new Guru to get here!

Nothing. This was as good a ride as I can deliver right now on my present road bike without peaking for this race and without killing myself for the run.

Well, maybe one thing. Because of the confusing signs and marking, I dismounted a little earlier than I had to, which probably cost me about 7-8 seconds on my bike time. But I don't fault myself for that.

Again, the killer here was my racking placement in transition, which required running with my bike to the complete opposite end of the transition area from the run out, then running all the way back. Because the waves were not done by age group, but rather when you signed up, this did not impact everyone equally. That sucked. Also, the premature ejaculation from my bike cost me a few seconds.

Register earlier.

For me, this run time was a huuuuuuuuuuuge improvement. Dang, according to the AG rankings, the run was my strongest sport this race. That's mindblowing for a guy who always used to build up time on the bike, then give it all away on the run. In keeping with my theme song for the day, "The Hunter" I picked out a couple of guys I wanted to hunt down on the run coming out of transition. One guy was about 6'6". lean as a greyhound, and went bounding off like a deer out of transition. He was a young buck, too, and I wanted to put the smackdown on him bad. Well, he goes tearing off out of sight like he's some kind of Kenyon, but I just maintined my solid pace, even up the Spring Street hill. I make the turn up toward the highschool and who do I see? Yep, big boy can't run the hills. A quarter mile later and he's mine. I tried hard not to grin as I passed his skinny azz.

As Glenn Danzig was singing in my head, "Ain't no use to run, boy. Ain't no use to hide. I've got you in the sights of my burning desirrrrrrrrrre."

After that, i made a hard charge to the new finish line with a strong kick that really got the crowd pumped. I have never felt so strong during the run portion of a race before-- what a great confidence builder for Racine!

If it was my 'A" race. I may have pushed a little harder, earlier. But I didn't want to totally cash myself with my big race yet to come.

I drank some water and immediately began looking for Terri and the boys. I also spotted jmwebs, so we grabbed some grub and sat down with Jim's buddy Kyle to eat. Mostly we just rejoiced in the sunshine and cool temps of a perfect freakin' day for a race.


The fact that I didn't taper basically at all for this race, and that my 'A' race, a HIM, is next weekend.


If I had one suggestion for this race log, it would be a separate Nutrition section, as mine seems to vary from race to race.

For this race, I took a bit of a risk and used my new InfinIT custom blend that I ordered last week and only trained with twice before. It's the drink that will be served at my HIM next week, so I thought I'd give it a whirl. i'm totally sold on it now and will switch from Accelerade. I can dial up (or in my case down) the flavor and tailor the electrolytes and nutrition to my needs. i thought it worked great. I also had one 150-cal e-Gel on the bike. I drank nothing on the run because I felt fine and didn't want to waste a second to grab a drink. It was the right decision.

In sum, this was my best Sprint distance race ever. I have never before felt so consistently strong throughout, particularly on the run. That was a tremendous and exhilarating feeling, especially to be passing other runners with ease compared to where I was two years ago. I am sooooo ready for Racine. I just hope the weather (and particularly the winds) are just what it was like today.

As always, it was great seeing jmwebs. I also ran into another guy in a donkey jersey who said he just borrowed it from his brother-in-law? What's up with that? I thought membership was a privilege? Great day, great race... now bring on the big one!