I realized I love reading longer race reports from people who try to make them interesting and I tend to feel cheated with the one liners. Hey, I wanna read about this stuff and see if any of it will help me as well as congratulating you on your achievement. So, here you go. A more fleshed out RR:
SWIM:
What can I say, it was in the Potomac. Brown water. Mild current. The first time I’ve had no trouble whatsoever seeing the buoys. Wow, someone needs to tell other RDs that’s how it’s done.
You want to know about waves? I’ve never seen anything like this. M40-44 had three waves all by itself. My wave, group C of M40-44, had about 100 people or so in it.
I drafted a bit but didn’t catch onto someone’s legs for any real length of time. No one was going near the pace I was interested in doing so I just swam. Every 100M there was this HUGE buoy so getting off course was a trick.
Coming back downstream more of the same. Just stroke, stroke, stroke, breathe, repeat. I weaved a bit away from the buoys but never too far away, just enough to stay out of everyone’s way.
T1:
I walked from the river to T1. That slowed me down more than a bit but there was also mud about 2-4“ deep as soon as you walked into the transition area and I saw more than one person ice skating through it. Oh well, a podium is not in my future so I might as well be stable and not slip and slide.
BIKE:
Holy cow, that was nice. Okay, it was also wet. Funny, I bought these wheels a few weeks ago for racing and didn’t think twice about the tires that came with them. The front wheel has a Pro3Race tire on it and it wasn’t until about 10 miles into the bike that I realized that was not just a reflection of the sky off the wet tire, that the tire itself was gray. You can tell I pay attention to the tires, right?
Generally flat course. Minor upslopes that not even I would call hills.
The crowds were great. They cheered everyone. Cowbells everywhere. The course was EXCELLENTLY marked.
I played back and forth with a guy with a Specialized bike for the majority of the ride. That helped both of us, I’m sure. Saw a girl from New Zealand, at least that’s what I took the “NZL” printed on her butt for. Accent was right too. She cruised past me on one of the uphills and I told her I’d see her again. She said on the downhill, right? Yup. Poof, after the next downhill I never saw her again.
Went through a tunnel twice. Got to dry off the tires just in time to get out the other side and get them throwing water again. Still, I’d never ridden through a tunnel before. I know, small things amuse small minds and all that.
Good ride. Good turning. Good pace. Never felt like I was really pushing
(trying to get that feeling in for B2B pace
) and all around just had fun on the ride.
Run:
Ahh, my nemesis. I hate running. I really do.
Started out slowly. Not really looking for a PB, was looking for a port-a-potty in all honesty. There were no potties available from the RD. Found one of the brick structure ones around the Washington Monument and made use of that. Was not amused as I had been looking for one since about half way through the bike.
After that I picked things up and started looking around to see where I was. There were females all around me. WTF? My wave and six waves in front of me were all male. I KNOW I did well on the bike so how come there are a whole herd of pony tails around? I started looking at the leg. AHHHH, “R” for an age group. It’s the runners for the relay groups. That was disconcerting for a little bit and made me wonder how long I’d spent in the potty.
Somewhere around mile 3 I realized I wasn’t really getting tired. I was expecting it, I was anticipating it, but it never happened. Wow! I decided to pick up the pace a bit and see what that brought me. It brought me a really good time. I slowed down and walked aid stations and got my PowerAid.
I believe they had different colours of PowerAid just to tell what aid stations people used after the race. Each one stained your skin another shade. After one station I looked like a vampire that had just finished eating. At another I turned blue and later purple as the two mixed.
I ran, actually semi-sprinted
(fast waddle counts as semi-sprint
) the last half mile. All the pictures of me look like I’m in pain for this part but I wasn’t. I was not feeling all that badly at all, in all honesty.
Okay, that was my race. Yeah, there was rain. Yeah my wetsuit was the driest thing I owned at the end of the race when I was packing up. My sweats needed wrung out and they had been inside a trash bag the whole time. That’s how much it rained at the beginning. I’m sure there’s more but those are the big parts.
Thank you for reading
United States
60F / 16C
Precipitation
Overall Rank = 2268/4391
Age Group = M40-44
Age Group Rank = 319/496
I could NOT sleep last night. The bloody cats tag teamed me and made sure I was a million degrees by stretching out on each leg. Nah, I'm not that grubly at 'em, they knew I was pinging off the walls.
Ate breakfast, drank coffee, surfed the weather channel. Found out it was going to rain all friggin' day. Wonderful.
It POURED during setting up of transition. I started shivering just about uncontrollably but didn't want to spend two hours in a wetsuit just standing around. Ended up putting the legs on and waiting.