GrooveTime!group - CLOSED!!! (Page 184)

TRACEY, great race report!!  How are you feeling today?  And when is the next race?

Hope everyone's having a great weekend!

LISA

http://www.allsportsevents.com/Results/triathlon_results/PirateTri1... />
Results are up for Pirate - I love a race that gets their results up in a timely manner.
Congrats Steve and Mandy

Denise

Edited by LadyNorth 2010-06-13 4:10 PM

SteveB,

Thanks for the comments on the run. I sure didn't feel terrific!! Ready for another lap? No not quite...

Not sure what my plan for Welland is in regards to a wetsuit...Gonna have to wait and see. Hopefully I'll get one to three OWS in the next 2 weeks. I've heard the tricks for wetsuit removal. I guess my fear right now is removing one wet for the first time during a tri and ending up having it stuck around my ankles or something like that.

As for my trip to Canada plans, Welland is going to be a separate trip. My 2 weeks off are July 5 & 12. No plans in stone yet, but you have my interest in doing a ride in Gar park. Probably looking to be in the Ottawa area around  July 8-14 or so.

The Google map doesn't list the roads quite the same and I am not too familiar with street names in the park but I get the just of your ride. I'm sure it is pretty killer especially to the relatively flat lands around here.


Edited by smarx 2010-06-13 3:35 PM

Both Steve and I had fun at Pirate!  Steve won his age group (WOOT!) and I beat my old time by @20 min!!

Steve is driving now, I will post the race report later.

Cheers!

Mandy

Congrats to MANDY and STEVE B!!  Can't wait to hear about it!  And great job STEVE B, back to back 1st place AG. or I guess that should be back to back to back!

thanks! More later but I jsut looked, my old time was faster than I thought - so I was 13 minutes faster this year, not 20.... whoops...- still pleased though...

Hey Denise,

I found Steve, but I couldn't find Mandy - I don't even know what her last name is.   Can you point me in the right direction?

Thanks.

#125 - Amanda Farrar - Caratunk ME

Usually just search Caratunk, and I am the only one from there! 

Thanks, Amanda.     CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!!!!!!

Looks like you had a very good race.   Alot of people in your age group.   Great swim considering you haven't really been swimming and a REALLY good bike leg.    How was your calf?   It didn't seem to keep you from setting a good pace. 

Glad you got your tube problem figured out before the race.      Looking forward to hearing all about it.  

CONGRATULATIONS STEVE!!!     BOY, you are setting the bar high.   

Looking forward to seeing the race report, and the pictures, of course.   Hope the races were all you expected, and more. 

Yea - that's how I found you - I sorta remembered the place you were from.
Denise

I just realized the reason I remember where you're from is because it's in your blog address which is on all your posts.

Edited by LadyNorth 2010-06-13 6:02 PM

OK here is my race report!

http://caratunkgirl.blogspot.com/2010/06/pirate-triathlon-race-report-arrgghh.html

Tracey!!! Congrats on your first tri!! WOOOT!

Congrats Mandy!

13 minutes better than last year is pretty awesome! Where was your biggest improvement?

SteveB,

You done good.  You have permission to not post until you get a good 12 hours sleep.

Denise

GANG!

First, Denise -
Many thanks for extending a moratorium for me, and I will take you up on the offer. I made it home mostly okay, and in about 6:37, so that was tolerable. It was 335 miles from Point Sebago, ME, to home, considerably less than Friday's drive down to Onset, MA!

Highlights of the weeknd were meeting and hanging out with Tracey and Mandy -- and various parts of their families. This included Tracey's spouse, Lou, and cool-dude son, Zack (Zac? Zach?), who taught me how to pose porperly for school photos (he is just 3!), and Mandy's wonderful sherpa of a mom, Mary.

And has been pointed out in other posts, I had two very solid races. There was no "drama", however, so when i get around to doing race reports, they'll be pretty dry.

For now, I'm wiped -- WAY too much driving, generally poor sleeping.........and the small matter of racing quite hard X2. So, I shall return tomorrow morning!

BENEFITS OF SCOUTING A COURSE

In the past couple of years I have gotten a bit lazy about this, taking the "it is what it is" approach. But this past weekend I made the time to drive the bike and run at Escape the Cape and drive the bike at Pirate. Here is what I learned:

Escape Bike
(1) It is, as advertised, flat.
(2) It is NOT, as I expected in places, at all remote.
(3) About 60% of the course is on a fairly narrow and quite winding road, with lots of "hidden" driveways; caution needed.
(4) Several of the turns had sand on the road the evening before; caution needed.
(5) An oval add-on right towards the end featured much rough pavement and a few looking potholes. These were along the right side of the road, so I rode on the left as much as possible.
(6) My pre-drive did NOT identify the no-passing zone.

Escape Run
(1) It has a few climbs, one of which was quite taxing (just before mile one).
(2) It has many turns and twists, not much in the way of straightaways to encourage geeting into a pure rhythm.
(3) Beautiful views, with water, water, everywhere. (I usually tune out scenery, but it was tough here.)

Pirate Bike (I am SOOO glad I pre-drove this baby!)
(1) The hills are significant, especially two of them.
(2) That two of the 90-degree turns are followed immediately by moderate climbs.
(3) The most dangerous descent has a right turn at the end that even comes back slightly upon itself.
(4) The second tough climb is followed by a glorious descent that features fresh, smooth pavement, a great place to build speed. (I hit 42mph here!)
(5) Just that this is a tough and technical course, and I'm sure that I gained a fair bit of speed in knowing what to expect and where to expect it. I averaged 20.3mph, and that maybe would've been 19.5, tops, had I done the race "cold", without the recon.

MANDY, great race report!!  Congrats on the big improvement (especially big if the swim was even longer this year!).

LISA

Lisa,

I finally got the brand/model of my saddle. It's a Specialized Women's Sonoma, 155mm.

TRACEY -

Yo! How're you feeling?? It's now about 48 hours since you finished your "escape", and where are your head and body at? Hopefully, you still feel great about how you did, and also that your body has not developed any DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) symptoms.

Your race report was superb, and it ceratinly helped me enjoy it all the more because I too had done the race. I could relate!

Just going through a bit of this and a bit of that....

I'm happy that you were pleased with your swim time, but beyond that I think you have a BIG upside to your swimming. I think I said that to you while we doing our pre-race dabbling, but as I've thought about some more I believe it all the more strongly. But as I told you then, your mechanics are very sound -- beautifully even recovery, and your feet are nice and tight when you kick. I suspect you are kicking from the hip, and that's good. This water wasn't quite clear enough for me to watch you underwater, so I don't know what's happening below the surface.

Overall, though, you are in a great position with sound mechanics right at the beginning of your "career". With that foundation, then, over time you can layer speed onto your swimming skills, and let's check back in a year or so and see where you have progressed to!
But doing it your way is sure more effective than to aim for speed at the beginning without the benefit of good form, as (a) thre best speed won't come in the presence of poor or sloppy form, and (b) losing bad swim habits is VERY difficult; they are easy to instill, hard to change!

Anyhow, enjoy your continued swim impovements -- which I'm sure will continue for a number of years!

I'm sorry I didn't ask on race morning whether or not you had put BY or Pam on your lower legs. I have blathered about that a lot here, and just figured you had done it. I know the announcements were made about lubing the neck to avoid salt-water chafing, but as for below the knees they said nothing -- and neither did I. I apologize! (For the record, I spray from the knees down quite liberally with Pam, which not only works better for removal of the wetsuit than does BG, but also costs much less per application. BodyGlide is what I use around my knee, and I'm pretty generous with it there.)

Your transition times WILL improve, have no fear. With each race you will larn some tricks that will, in time, lop minutes off those times. You were just shy of 4:49 for T1 on Saturday, and if you do Escape the next two years you should be down under 2:00 for the 2012 race. It really does come down quickly!

Yeah, that no passing zone was a nuisance. I was following two guys who hung behind one woman for a while, and then scooted past her; I followed. Then right after the turnaround they stayed behind another person for a while, nd then passed her, and again I followed. I figure it cost me maybe a minute, but as you say it was a good time to just sit back for a while and get some rest. I'm not sure why the no passing zone was so lengthy, other than the golf course might not have wanted an accident that might disrupt the golfers. The tight part JUST before the turnaround maybe justified it, but not the parts going past the greens; the road was really nice there, and wide enough to accommodate passing, IMHO!

Lynn needs the machine, so i am off for a while . But apropos the note a few above this one, if you tell me the correct spelling of boy-child's name I will edit it to read correctly in that post, okay?

Congratulations - Tracey Mandy and Steve

ANNE -

Thank you!

Yes, the races were all I was expecting. Although the lengths were approximately the same, they were two very different critters:

SWIM -- One saltwater with a current, the other freshwater and perfectly calm
BIKE -- One flat and suburban, the other hilly and rural
RUN -- One rambling and coastal-scenic, the other more straightforward and going through hoity-toity housing.

But again, it tells me that doing two in one weekend is not the wisest thing. I may have had a very fine race yesterday with a terrific bike split on a tough course, but overall my head wasn't entirely in it, just in trying to rebound from Saturday's effort. A few years ago I navigated two-intwo-days events okay, but I might be losing abit of that ability. I am VERY gald I didn't sign up for both events at Musselman, and I have definite concerns about doing Triple-T NC in October. Two in one day -- such as Fronhofer Tool Double or the Sunday of the Triple Challenge of Chicago Triathlon -- also have me a bit concerned, but that involves a different strategy than one on Sat and one on Sun.

I REALLY want to do Pirate again next year when there is nothing the day before. If sign-up was today, I would probably register right now!

GREAT JOB TRACEY!

Congrats on a great race, Mandy.  Love the blog as usual. 

STEVE B - what can I say?  We're not worthy!  :-)