Beat everyone in my wave, which was cool I guess. Actually I beat them by a lot. I definitely felt the effects of sleeplessness on this one. My breathing was more labored than it should have been and my heart was working harder, and then in the second mile my chest started hurting really bad. I decided I would be happy with 6:00/mile. Since the 1st mile was a bit under this, I got to back off for the 2nd mile. My legs actually felt pretty good when I finished. Oh yeah, a BTer cheered for me when I was getting close to the finish. That was pretty cool.

According to my watch:
Mile 1: 5:47
Mile 2: 6:05



Nothing.

Not the greatest T1. I've had faster transitions with a wetsuit on! I put my aero helmet on over my sunglasses, which was awkward because there isn't much space. Normally I go sunglassesless but this would be a full hour on the bike so I wanted them.

After I grabbed my bike I had to squeeze it through the 2-foot space between racks on my way to the exit. Every bike in my wave and the later waves was there. Seemed stupid to put the later waves closest to the exit, and the racks were way too close. If they reversed the order early waves would move their bikes out of the way and no one would have any problems.

Clipping in wasn't real good. When I was finishing up the run I was watching all the people trying and failing to clip in. It was pretty funny, actually. So, I knew I was going to have the same problem. I guess running before a bike ruins your aim.


Register early to get in an early wave.

Again, I had to work harder than usual for a given pace, and I couldn't put out as much power as usual. I averaged about 200 W, and my FTP is 230 W. By definition I should have been up at 230.

Starting the bike 10 waves back was the most annoying experience I have had in a long time. I had to pass everyone, although that wouldn't have been inherently bad. The bad part was that people were all over the road, riding in crazy ways. People with the whole road to themselves were on the left half of the lane quite often. I'm a die-hard left-hand passer, so I had to swing way into the other lane a lot of times. I finally got annoyed and started doing right-hand passes at 24 mph. Not very safe in hindsight.

I have sciatica in my left leg, and it bothered me real bad for the 1st half of the ride. Eventually it went away, and the 2nd half of the bike was faster. Weirdly, my groin muscles were pretty sore after this ride. I guess I need to work those suckers out.

I thought that the course was 22 miles for some reason, so the end of the course surprised me. In hindsight I could have pushed harder. My goal for this race was actually to hit 22 mph for the bike leg, and that was before the whole staying-awake-for-days-on-end thing. So, it was cool that I hit that.

Miles 1 - 5: 14:02
Miles 6 - 10: 14:03
Miles 11 - 15: 13:16
Miles 16 - 20: 12:03 <-- wish I could do that all the time

Do 230 W.

I didn't get to do a flying dismount, because the end caught me by surprise. That had a big impact on my T2 time.

Other than that it was pretty uneventful. All the bikes were gone now, so I didn't have trouble moving through the racks :) Apparently I was first in my wave in the bike too.

Flying dismount!

Gotta love the first brick of the season. My legs didn't want to move, but I think they started to improve about 1/4 mile in. After one mile my legs were back to normal. Probably my biggest problem was that my stomach felt a little bad. It was hard to be motivated to pass people, because they were from different waves. So, I just tried to cruise with a minimum of discomfort.

Mile 1: 6:16
Mile 2: 5:42

Nothing.

Tried to jog but couldn't since my hands were full of food. So I did some stretching. Met a couple BTers, too.


Poor preparation this week.


I give them 4 stars because I don't like it when wave seeding is done 1st-come-1st-serve. Thanks to their seeding I no longer fear cat-5 crits. They really should have people submit times (I think they do, actually) and then put the faster people first (they definitely don't). It's just so much safer for everyone when you don't have faster bikers sneaking up on people going twice their speed.

Here are some good points. The bike course was flat, fast and fun. The post race food was really good. They did a very good job with that, and the shirt was good looking and true to size. And not cotton.