Elkhart Lake Triathlon - Olympic Distance - TriathlonOlympic

I took the swim clinic from Lauren Jensen on the Friday before and she had a lot of good tips. The biggest one was to slow down on the start. She said to barely swim, let the adreneline wear off and then start you swim. I took that advice and had a decent run into the lake, two dolphin dives and then started to slowly swim. i could feel that my body wanted to go, but i restrained and let that feeling pass and just work on getting a rythem and concentrateing on long smooth strokes. After about a minute, i finally felt my HR come down, looked at my watch and it said 168, a little high, but it's a race. Peaked at a couple bouys to stay in line with the course and set my target on a swimmer a few yard ahead of me. Didn't chase, but slowly reeled him in and tried my first attempt at drafting. I guess i did OK, but i didn't really notice much of a difference, so i passed him. Took afew breastrokes with about 200 yds. to go to the turnaround. Made the bouy and then swam downwind on the final leg. Felt pretty good, but my left calf was starting to tighten. I knew it was going to be problamatic.

People were complaining about he water, but I didn't think it was that bad. I never really had any issues with the chop.

I probably could have pushed a littel harder, but in my whole race plan was not to burn up on the swim. I still had a lot of race left. The swim was the longest I ever raced, so it was a learning experience.

Whew, this was one long transition. Lots of running a hill and then more running. I took my wetsuit off pretty quickly. I had to sit down to put my socks on, but after that I was fine.

Not much i could do. I should practice getting on the bike with the shoes still on, but I didn't want to try it on a race.

From T1 I new that my left calf was going to act up on the bike. I decided not to mount my shoes on the pedals from the last race incident. I was able to get into the pedals pretty quickly and got up to speed. There was some significant tightness in the calf, so i concentrated on stretching our my cycling stroke as long as possible and concentrated on driving my heel down a bit. It seemed to help.

I had biked the course before, so I knew what to expect. There was a pretty strong wind on the coure and I probably pushed a little too hard and might have played a factor on the overall ride. I didn't pass a lot of people as i was one of the first waves and a better than average swimmer, so i was passed mostly by noticable faster cyclists. Made the half way point and looked at my average speed and decided i would take advantage of the down wind segments and get it moving a bit. i felt strong on the flats and was really generating some nice speed with little effort. I think for the longest stretch I was going well over 26 mph. Of course, hills slow me down, but I thought I navigated them easily, just hard for me to get "me" up there.

I felt pretty good throughout, but there are always things you can do to get faster.

Pretty good overall. I did forget to put my running hat on, so had to double-back 5-6 steps, but after that the legs felt pretty good. The transition area was really long and you had to run down long aisles to get out. There was no openings in between the racks. Slugged down a gel and a couple of sips of Accelerate. I learned my lesson from Green Bay.

Nothing really.

It's always my weakest part of the race, I know that going in. I some ways I think I set myself up to no run all out, but I did OK, considering it was my first OLY. The coures had some pretty significant hills and one of my goals was to not walk up any of them.

My HR was again too high to be comfortable, but it was about the same for most races. Got myself into a comfortable pace and then preoceeded to get passed by just about everybody. It is what I do. I think sometimes I'm fraid of pushing it a little faster for fear of having nothing left at the end.

I know the only way I am going to get faster is to loose more weight and start practicing running faster,

2 Waters, Gatorade, 1/2 bagel and orange slice. Walked around and chatted to company team members, BT'rs, fellow racers, etc. Great event and the weather held off!


Great Race!