05.19.2019 Sunday Sunday Sunday

Todays is a rest day.

Yesterday I had a great race.  We got wind that came in 30 minutes before race time but rain didn't come in until about 10 minutes after the award's ceremony at 9:30 AM.  By 11 AM we were in a torrential down pour with lots of tornado warning and some that even touched down.

I had a great race.  My goals were to go under 10 minutes on the swim, under 30 minutes on the bike leg, under 20 minutes on the run and to get through transitions fast enough that I could finish in under an hour. 

My swim rile was 9:45 for 500m.  We has a counter clockwise triangle course in lake swim.  I was really happy for the counter clock wise because I pull to the left and seem to stay on track a lot better with the swim markers on the left than on the right.  Swimming to the first marker I just swap easy and tried to draft as much as I could.  Making the first turn I was going right into the sun and couldn't see the second marker.  I has swimmers on both sides of me and so I figured I must be on course.  Each time I tried to spot the marker I could see a long line a swimmers in front of me.  I just followed the line. Turning the last marker I started to pass people.  That is odd for me.  I am a middle of the pack swimmer and usually have the people that started in waves behind me passing me at the end. This was a pretty good swim for me.  The wind made the water choppy, but copy water has never bothered me much

When I got to T1 the first thing I did was count head.  I looked like there were 5 guys in T1.  Some were surly already on the bike course. I worked as fast as I could but fumbled a lot and new for a Sprint Triathlon I was probably pretty slow for my T1 time.

I got out fast on the bike.  There was one guy right in front of my that I passed about one mile into things.  I was looking for the next target but could see anyone.  So I pushed after for a mile and looked again.  No one.  I didn't know how many people were ahead of me.  I figured at least but probably 7-8.  I road for about 4 miles before I saw anyone.  There ended up only being two people in front of me.  I passed one at the 6 mile turn around and rode hard trying my hardest to catch the leader before we got to T2 but never saw him.  He finished the bike leg 9 seconds faster than me for the fastest bike leg of the day.  I was the #2 bike time of the day.

I had pushing things harder on the bike that I had been training at.  I think that was the right choice, but I wasn't as fresh coming off the bike as I had been in practice.  I was running at about 20 seconds/mile slower than I had been training.  I was going about 15 seconds/mile faster than the guy in the lead but he was a long ways in front of me.  At the turn around I had cut the lead about in half so things were going to be close.  I told the guy as we passed that if he would wait for me I would run with him.  He didn't stop though.  I didn't speed up.  I paced myself to be with in striking distance at the finish.  With half a mile left we had to loops through a camp ground sight.  I was going to wait until the 2nd loop to make my move but there were race directors on the loop and the guy in the lead blew right through the turn around cones.  There was no turn arrow like all the other turnarounds so I thought that they much have changed the course from what was printed.  So... inteady of having a half mile to run the leader down I had 400 meters.  I could have done it if I went into a full sprint, but I am not as young as I used to be and pulling stunts like that I have to pay for it after the race.  So I just stayed on pace and finished like I would have it there was no one within five minutes of me. I was 5 seconds behind the leader.  Later when I saw my run time at 20 seconds faster than my open 5K time I knew that we should have been doing two loops through the camp grounds. I would have caught the leader with one more loop.  ;-)

I had a great race.  5th place on the swim, 2nd place on the bike, 1st place on the run.  2nd place over all and 2nd place in my AG.

Race Report

It was my 8th Triathlon and my 8th PR.  I am making steady progress.  

My first triathlon (2015) I was 7th out of 8 people in my age group.