General Smallwood Triathlon - TriathlonSprint

Swim was fine - went off course 2x but not by more than 15 yards. Did not push swim and just swam next to my friend Dave. We had decided earlier that we would break from the pack and then just cruise as the bike course starts off with a climb and there is a 250 meter run from the swim to T1. Dave and I had the exact same time coming out of the water - cool.

Pay more attention to Dave - he is better at OWS and always swims in a straight line - the two times I was off course, he stayed on course.

Great T1 for me - 2:46, 3rd fastest overall time - my best place yet.

Nothing

Jumped out of T1 and was in second place a few seconds behind 1st, with Dave right on my heels in 3rd. Dave went by me at mile 2ish but I kept both him and the number 1 guy in sight until mile 10 or so.

At mile 11 I was passed and though my legs were definitely feeling the effects of the run the day before, I decided to hammer and see if I could stick with this guy. He was slowly pullin away from me and had maybe 30 feet on me when we hit a nice long straight away. There was big intersection ahead of us with a cop patrolling traffic. The 3rd place guy started to go through the intersection when the cop jumped up and yelled that we had to turn left. The 3rd place guy had by this time been through the intersection and had to turn around. I locked up the brakes and barely made the left. The 3rd place guy passed me a few minutes later cursing about the cop and horrible course support.

I stuck with him and we went through another large intersection that had no cops or volunteers at it. He looked back at me and I told him I did not know if we were supposed to keep going straight or not so we kept on going. Eventually he pulled away from me. I knew I was sitting in 4th at this point and 1st in my AG (my friend Dave is in my AG but registered as an elite). Just as I was thinking this a volunteer yelled only a little further you two. I looked back and saw Damon, a guy who had crushed me at Luray just 2 months ago, coming up on me.

There was another big intersection up ahead and a cop was not paying attention to us. Damon and I both yelled and asked if we were supposed to go straight - he waived us through straight so off we went. About 2.6 miles later, Damon turned around and said we went to far. My computer had reset by this point so I had no idea. As we started on the way back Damon's front tubbie blew. Good news is you can ride on a blown tubular so we did and average about 15 mph the whole was back - we were just chatting away. We went by the cop and both said some choice words. He would not even look at us.

Not sure what I could have done - not listen to the cop as he waived us through?

By my calc - I did 2.6 miles at race pace and 2.6 at 15mph. Backing into my bike time I would have been 46 minutes and 5 seconds on the bike.

Was not racing anymore so Damon and chatted as we put away our bikes, etc.

I came out of T2 and decided to just start encouraging everyone rather than be bitter and pissed off. So I told everyone I passed - good luck, or looking strong or something like that. Damon and I jogged for a while together and at mile 1 decided we should race to see who would have won. I jumped out ahead and was about 50 feet in front of him at mile 2.5ish when I saw Shelly123 ahead. I ran up next to her and told her to push to the end as there were very few woman around and she was having a great race. 2nd overall for her! Great job! Cruised in with Michelle.

Definitely could have been a lot lot faster on the run. Damon passed me when I was running with Michelle and ended up at 21:38 compared to my official time of 21:56. If we had raced the first mile and I not cruised the end, I should have been 21 low. Legs felt really strong on the run unlike the bike.

Nothing - awesome to offer encouragement to everyone and help get Michelle across that finish line.

I was really dissappointed with this race. Numerous problems on the course that cost people time, the awards were sent to the wrong place so no one got an award, etc.

Backing out 18 minutes for the bike detour, :15 seconds for T2, and :45 seconds for the run and I would have been right around 1:21 which would have put me 1st for AG, and 6th overall. Crap that is depressing.