Blaster Blast - TriathlonMini Sprint

Last year did the I swam in 7:52. This year was 6:29, so a 1:23 improvement, and I moved up from the bottom third to middle of the pack overall. Felt good the whole way. Pacing seemed right on.

We were swimming heat 2 to a lane. The guy I was sharing the lane with was doing flip turns to my open turns. He had a body length on me at every turn, but I came off the wall even with him almost every time. His turns didn't seen that bad, so my open turns must be improving.

Nothing

This was a wacky set up for T1. Bikes were outside laying on the grass, and you broght all your T1 stuff inside and changed behind your lane. While you were swimming, they brought your bike and racked it just outside the door from the pool. It required some quick thinking to get everything set up, but no problems.

Last year I was bottom 1/3 in T1 time. This year, I was middle of the pack. Basically I just used less stuff. No garmin, no HRM, less clothes, put on gloves while running to the bike instead of while in tranistion. I could have been even faster by skipping the bike jersey, but it was damm cold (low 30's with a 20 mph wind). I guess I just need to HTFU since there were several biking in just the tri top.

Nothing. This was smooth and controlled.

2nd in age group with a sub 17 mph speed? WTF? Well, start with almost a 1,000 feet of climbing in 8 miles, combine with cold and windy weather (low 30's and a 20 mph wind), and add in 45 90 degree turns and you get one slow overall speed.

For the second year in a row, no one passed me on the bike (one guy tried but I passed him back within half a lap then never saw him again). It was probably an even better accomplishment this year as I swam faster and was in an earlier heat, so I was out there with better athletes this year.

I pretty much gave it a good strong effort on each hill and tried to recover on the downhill.

My time improved by about 1 minute over last year.

Nothing, although after seeing my run time, I probably pushed too hard on the bike as usual, and didn't have much left for the run.

I got my feet out of my shoes OK, but lost a couple of seconds on the dismount. I otherwise felt pretty quick. It was just park the bike, put on the running shoes and take off the helmet, grab the running gloves and go.

T2 time was top 10 overall and tops in my age group. Very pleased.

Practice dismounts?

At the start of the run, my feet felt frozen and my legs were very stiff. All of the climbing took a great deal out of my legs. This just felt sllllooooowwww and painful. At about the 1.5 mile mark, it felt like I got my legs back.

One of the top over 40 guys from last year was back this year and I had looked up his race number. At a little over a mile, I heard footsteps behind me, and as the guy passed me, I saw it was my over 40 competition. I screamed out "crap" and tried to pick of the pace. I stayed with him for about a 100 yards, but then he left me in the dust.

Run split this year was about 1 minute faster than last year. Based on my training, I was really hoping for a much bigger improvement.

I definitely need to do some bricks. The run was half way over before I felt like I got my legs back.

I ran hard but I could have pushed harder. I wish that I had at least tried to stay with my age group competitor a little longer.

Grazing the post-race food spread.


Lack of brick training, and limited training on the bike at this point in the year. Could have pushed harder on the run. Just wasn't prepared today to reach down and really suffer that last 1.5 miles on the run.


3rd place in my age group, and first ever podium finish (even if there were only 8 in my age group), so I am reasonably pleased with the day.

The T1 set up was pretty weird, and wasn't as well communicated as it could have been, and I am not really fond of having people touch my bike. Otherwise, the race was reasonably well run and organised.