North East Triathlon - TriathlonOlympic

The swim was definitely long. My last olympic was 30:00 (with a wetsuit) and even including the 300 yards or so that you ran from the water to the first timing mat it still seemed about 2 or 300 yards long. Pretty crappy swim for me as I never really got into a good rhythm and had some drifting. I don't know what it is, but my stroke seems to go to sh-t when I'm in an OWS situation. Need to work on that .....

More OWS practice. Push myself harder as I never really felt winded. I was pretty upset by my time and effort with the swim and it put me in the wrong mood for the rest of the race. Mentally thinking "How the hell can I make up 15 minutes on the bike and run to place??? It ain't gonna happen."

The timing mat was right before you got into the transition area so it was easy to go fast. All I had to do was drop off the speedsuit, put my helmet and glasses on and run out. Cut and dry, simple transition.

Not much. Maybe get out of the transition area faster. It did take me too long once on the bike to get into my shoes, but that time counts in the bike leg, not in the transition. This was the fastest T1 I've ever had. 3rd in AG and 31st overall (only 3 seconds off of fastest in AG).

Grrrrrrr. Took to long to get into my shoes. Still miffed about the swim, but happy about my transition. Got into the groove finally and took off. I knew this was a rolling course but I had not previewed it so I didn't know exactly what to expect. I was just hoping that there was nothing too brutal since I was using my 11-21 cassette on the disc. But I survived Columbia with that without any real issues, so not too much to worry about.

All the way up to the turnaround I was flying, easily 3 - 5 mph faster than everyone I passed. Legs didn't feel quite all the way there which is probably a product of reduced training and still not completely recovered from IMLP. Oh, and the late night with awesome food and 9 different wine samples with all the courses probably didn't help .... ;-P

Not long after the turn around I heard the dreaded hiss hiss on each tire revolution. DOH!!! Front tire flat ...... Pulled over, and just took my sweet time changing it over. Took a little bit of effort to get the tire off the rim since I glue the whole thing and don't leave a small portion unglued like some do (blame it on the mechanic and road racer in me). and I didn't pre-stretch the new tire, so that took some effort to get on. Oh well. Never got out of sorts and just moved calmly but slowly. Probably lost somewhere in the range of 7 minutes here. Ouch .....

Back on the bike, back up to speed and start the real rolling section. Caught a bunch of people that passed me while I was changing the flat. I was seriously puzzy-footing through the corners and descents though because rolling an unglued tubular is not a fun thing and I didn't want to crash. It wouldn't have been a big deal but this was a pretty technical course from that perspective and I was being overly cautious. I'm sure that cost me a minute or two as well.

Pretty uneventful ride otherwise. I was so far out of the faster crowd that no one even came close to passing me the whole time (not that many ever would to begin with). I also think that the course was longer than the advertised 23.2. My cyclometer said 24 and the time I got even subtracting out the flat based on my speeds seems to hint at that as well.

Not flat, and if I did, change the damn thing faster. Mentally I was done after the flat and it was just get through to the finish. But gearing was not an issue and I climbed well.

Another decent transition. but I had trouble getting the left shoe on. The heel tab folded in, so I had to quickly kneel down to fix it. Threw me off for a few seconds. I yelled to my co-worker and her friend that I flatted .....

Get the shoe on faster. Focus more. Still 10th for AG, but only 105th overall for T2. Should have been like a :40 one though .....

Not much to say here. Legs were a little tight and my breathing took a bit to get under control. First mile was a quick 6:36 but it was more flat on that portion and the rest was rolling, so the pace went up. I did back it off a little after that first mile.

Steadily picked off people one at a time. Realized that I actually was in decent position overall as most of the people I was passing were pretty fit and the people on the return portion were moving well. So focused a bit more on having a solid run. Only two people passed me, both after the turn around. One was in a younger AG, one was older.

Coming into the finish there was no one near me, so no real desire to press it. Just glad the race was over.

I had a pretty decent run considering my fitness level. Probably could not have gone much faster on that day. Happily the Zoot shoes were not a problem at all and no blisters from them this time. Ran sockless. Just had the issue in T2 putting the left one on.

Sat down, shook my head and drank a water bottle. Talked with my co-worker and her boyfriend and congratulated him on his result. Called Mir, packed my stuff, checked my results and took off. Amazingly got top 10 in the AG, but it was not a very big or deep field compared to what I'm used to racing in (much larger events).


Recovery from LP, mentally not there, flat tire.


Good race, even with the longish swim. Well run, lots of motivated volunteers and nice challenging course. I'd do it again. (As an aside, I initially was only going to do the sprint ..... which I probably would have won based on the times ... oh well, shoulda coulda woulda).