After my bad wetsuit experience earlier this year at beginning of the Kinetic Half's swim segment (open water panic attack!), I resolved to take it easy at first this time and work my way up to my usual tempo. I did just that, and within 200m or so I was into my usual breathing rythm and was feeling strong.

I really couldn't see the buoys most of the time, and I did a lot of 'swimming with the minnows' hoping that the entire school wasn't offcourse. I did see the turn-around buoys just fine, and I cut that angle pretty tight.

On the way back I did spy the rope people were telling me about (apparently if you found it all you had to do was keep it in sight and you would be fine). However, I knew that we had to go around the spillway, which was to the right of the rope, so I stayed to the right figuring that it would be a straighter path than just sticking to the rope. As I got closer to the spillway my theory was validated.

I had a bit of trouble finding my feet as I was finishing up, but after an initial stumble which I chalk up to my usual post-swim delerium, I ran up the ramp and started taking my suit off.

Not much. This was a solid performance for me.

I had a tough time getting my suit leg off over the darned timing chip, and had a bit of difficulty putting on my by-then-soaking socks, but all in all this was a pretty good transition. The rack placement for the first wave definitely helped a lot though.

At the last second I decided to ditch my sunglasses (with clear lenses) as I figured they would just get wet and bug me. I'm glad I did that.

Put timing chip under my suit pantleg?

It took me most of the first lap to get into a proper rythm. The first part on Glade has poor road conditions, was wet, the cones were left too small a space to bike in, and was covered in leaves and other debris from the storms that went through a few hours before the race. So, it was a bit nervewracking, and I took it a bit slow just because I was worried about wiping out, especially on the turns.

I noticed almost right away that I wasn't able to get any fluid (HEED) from my aerodrink. For some reason nothing was coming up no matter how hard I sucked on that stupid straw. I gave up on it for the first two laps and just drank from my water bottle the down tube.

By second lap I was feeling much more powerful and confident, and I started to push it a bit more. I also saw that according to my garmin I was in 20mph avg range, which I didn't expect on a moderately hilly course like this. I was getting passed left and right, though, which was disheartening. I was chicked a bunch of times - you ladies are way fast!

On the third lap I tried a new tack with the aerodrink - I took the straw out entirely and put it in the other way. It worked! I was very pleased to have HEED available to me again!

After the third lap I turned onto Ridge Heights drive and saw a terrible sight - a white mercedes in the middle of the street and a triathlete lying immobile right in front of it. I looked like a really bad accident. I couldn't tell exactly what had happened but there was no ambulance yet, and a police officer was there. But it was quite a horrible scene. I was thinking about that dude as I pulled into T2 and hoped that he would be OK.

When I saw my eventual time I was disappointed. But, then again, I'm always disappointed with my bike time.

My average HR was 162 so I don't think I could have pushed it harder and still had as good a run as I did. Need better hardware...

Bike harder? Better bike...

Pretty fast here. no issues. Just switched shoes, grabbed my nathan bottle with HEED and took off.

As I was futzing with my garmin and running through to the exit, I nearly ran into someone also exiting T2. She wound up just ahead of me on the start and I figured I would try to catch her on the run.

Nothing

Pretty much right away I started to feel tightness in my calves. This tightness got a bit worse as the run continued, but to my relief it never turned into an outright cramp.

I tried for some time to catch the woman who came out just in front of me, but she was just too fast.

It took me a mile and a half or so to get into a decent rythm. It was around this time that I saw the race leaders coming back the opposite direction. I recognized David Cascio from the Reston Sprint the last two years. I also did a running high five with one of the top guys, not sure who it was.

Near what I thougth was mile three the top women went by, and it looked like it was quite a race between them because 3 were right together in a pack and the fourth was about 25 yards behind. I recognized the eventual #2 because I had been in a back-and-fourth bike passing duel with her a couple of years ago at the Reston Sprint (before she utterly dusted me on the run...)

Right after the leading ladies went by I was pretty excited because I thought I was almost at the turnaround and I wasn't all that far behind them. Alas, my optimism was unfounded. I thougth the turnaround was at the poolhouse I ran to the week before when I was checking out the run course, but it turned out that it was past here about a third to a half a mile. So - in actuality I was pretty far behind them.

I plugged through and tried to keep my pace in the 7:30-7:45 range. Just before the turnaround I heard someone say 'Jeff!' - it was Rich from my work, who sits in the cube adjacent from mine. He was volunteering handing out water and sponges with his daughter's girl scout trip. Pretty cool - didn't expect to see him that day.

Pretty soon I went through the Colts Neck and South Lakes tunnels, and after that second tunnel I heard the crowd and the announcer. The only problem was the big hill I had to get up before being able to get into the stadium. That hill - in pgamike's words 'Was not nice'. Ouch - indeed it was not. Very painful. It took me a few hundred yards to recover from that, but thankfully by the time I actually got onto the track I was ready for a final kick.

I came around the track and started to sprint as soon as I was in the final straightaway. I saw that the race clock was just under 2:24, and I was racing the clock to come in under that mark. I just barely made it!

Felt awesome...

I looked down at my Garmin and it showed I had come in around 46 min. I was very pleased as that is within 2 min of my fresh 10k PR.



Not much. This was a good run for me and I pushed it as hard as I could.

Grabbed my water bottle and wet towel and went around the track to where the runners were entering to wait for my buddy Dave, who I had seen in the last mile (and gave a big running high-five to) and knew must be pretty close behind me.

I saw Dave come through and congratulated him on finishing his first Olympic. We hung around for abit wating for my friend Sarah who I knew was in the last swim wave.

As we were waiting I saw a guy who looked like BT'er 'pgamike', so I took a chance and said to him 'Mike?'. It was him indeed! It was great to meet him in person and we chatted for a long while. He mentioned that another avid BT'er - hooslisa - had raced as well and pointed her out. I said hi to her later while getting some coffee at the food stand, but she seemed a bit weirded out by some strange dude recognizing her (sorry!).

Dave and I waited a long, long time for Sarah. We figured she must have had some kind of equipment issue, because if she had finished she would have been done by then (she's a real fastie).

I was ready to take off after seeing my time on the printout, but Dave wanted to stick around for the awards. I knew I hadn't placed (hadn't even come close time-wise!) and he was behind be time-wise, but I hung around anyway. Once we heard the time of the third place person in our age group (2:05!) we just laughed and headed for the exit.

I went to T2, got my phone, and saw that Sarah did in fact have an issue - with her (new) wetsuit, and had to DNF. That really stunk, and I felt for her given my unfortunate experience at the Kinetic earlier in the year.




lack of a bike bling


I'll be back again for sure next year. Great race.