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Blaster Blast - TriathlonMini Sprint
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 Swim
Comments: The swim was in the pool. Instead of a snake swim, they had heats of 12 swimmers each, 2 to a lane. At the end of the first lap, I looked at the pace clock and saw that, despite all of my efforts to go slow, I was 5 to 8 seconds ahead of the pace I wanted. I slowed down on the second lap, but I was still faster than I wanted to be. I was concerned at that point that starting too fast would come back to haunt me, but I settled down after that and pretty much swam an even pace after that. I ended the swim 8 seconds ahead of my predicted pace, so I guess I was pretty much on target. What would you do differently?: Not much. I have no experience to guage my performance against, but I basically did what I planned to do, and I am pretty happy with the swim. My swimming has improved so much over the last few months, and I just need to continue swimming regularly. If I can continue to progress at anywhere near the same rate, I will be very happy.  Transition 1
Comments: T1 was out the door of the pool, down the stairs and into the fieldhouse, but I had to run half a lap around an indoor track to get to my bike. It was still pretty cold outside so even though it took some time, I put a lot of clothes on. I was bottom half on T1 time, so I guess this is something to work on, or else I just need to suck it up and deal with the cold. Honestly, for my first time, it seemed to go pretty smoothly. I hadn’t practiced my transitions (I was really using this race to practice my transitions for my oly race in a few weeks), but I had spent some time thinking about them, and I had determined the order that I wanted to do everything and I had laid everything out accordingly and really, I had no problems. What would you do differently?: I took the time to put my HRM on (I didn't want to wear it during the swim). I am not sure the time was worth it for a sprint. Buy a tri-top, and suck it up and deal with cold  Bike
Comments: When I first heard about this race and saw that the bike portion of the race was only 8 miles, I though how bad could 8 miles be? After mapping the course, I determined it had 1,000 feet of climbing in the 8 miles, so it was a challenging little course. The course was 6 laps around downtown Golden. Sort of a big rectangle where someone tilted one of the corners of the rectangle down. There were a lot of turns and not a single flat spot on the entire course. My initial plan take it easy on the first lap and then get out of the saddle and push hard on the hills for each remaining lap and then try to recover on the downhills. That quickly went out the window. I just had to work too hard on the hills and the downhill portion wasn’t long enough to fully recover, so I just sat and spun up the hills as best I could. Overall, I felt pretty darn good on the bike. My HR was spiking up pretty high on the hills, but overall it was about where I wanted it to be. 16mph for an 8 mile bike seems really slow compared to my normal speed, and since I hit almost 40 mph on the downhills, so my speed on the climbs must have been near zero. But, I was passing people regularly, and did not get passed once on the bike, and I ended up top quarter for the bike, so no real complaints What would you do differently?: Nothing really. Transition 2
Comments: I had wanted take my bike gloves off on the last lap and get my feet out of my shoes and ride with my feet on top of my shoes the last few hundred yards, but the bike portion finished on the steepest part of the course and I just wasn’t comfortable not being in my shoes, so I just rode to the dismount point and jumped off. T2 was pretty uneventful. I took off my helmet running in with my bike, racked my bike, kicked my shoes off, put my running shoes on, grabbed my hat and I was off. The time looks longer than it was because you then had to run entire lap of the indoor track to get out of the building and out on to the run course. I was top quarter in T2 time, so I can’t complain. What would you do differently?: Nothing  Run
Comments: I haven’t done much brick work, so I was concerned with how my legs would respond, especially coming off of a hilly bike course. I ended up feeling better than I expected. My legs didn’t have that jelly like feeling, they just didn’t want to turn over very fast. I felt like aerobically, I could have gone a bit harder, but my legs just wouldn’t respond. The miles weren’t clearly marked on the course, so it was hard to really judge my pace, but I felt like my pace was pretty even. I never felt like I was going to puke or that my lungs might explode, so I could have pushed it more on the run, but for some reason I just couldn’t make myself. I guess I just didn’t want to blow up in my first race. My HR was just about my LT at the start of the run but never went beyond it. What would you do differently?: Push a little harder in the last half Post race
Warm down: A banana, water, and back to the pool and the bike course to cheer on those in the later heats. Overall, I am very pleased with my race. Everything went very smoothly. I didn’t have a lot of goals for this race other than to gain experience. One of the things I just didn’t know was how hard I could push the swim and the bike without blowing up, and I think I have found out that I am better at pacing than I thought. Although this was my first tri, I have done a lot of 5K’s and 10K’s and a few longer races. This turned out to be about as much fun as I have had at any race, at any distance. I’ll be back for more. Event comments: Very small race. Pretty well run. The students at the School of Mines were responsible for organizing and running the race and got college credit for doing so. They did a pretty good job. There was a spot on the run course where the course left the concrete and went onto a dirt path that needed a volunteer to direct or at least some signage, but otherwise the course was well marked. Last updated: 2007-04-14 12:00 AM
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 2007-04-16 11:00 AM |
Veteran  582   Golden, CO |  Subject: Blaster Blast |
| General Discussion-> Race Reports! |
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United States
Colorado School of Mines
34F / 1C
Sunny
Overall Rank = 38/124
Age Group =
Age Group Rank = 0/
This was my first tri. It was almost a du instead. Two days prior to the tri, the weather forecast for race day was for a foot of snow, and the RD had already said that if there was snow or ice on the ground, the bike portion would be cancelled and they would move the run indoors. At that point I was about ready to bag the whole thing. Then the weather gods smiled, the storm system went further south than expected, and Kansas got our snow. The day turned out to be beautifully sunny. The temp was in the low 30’s at race time, but it warmed up quickly.
With no experience doing this, and with the uncertain weather, I wasn’t sure what to bring to the race. The race was just minutes from my house, so I just brought everything. It was probably a little comical watching me set up my transition area. It was also comical seeing me trying to figure out what to do with my time after getting my transition area set up. Should I look at the pool, figure out the course, go for a brief ride, figure out how cold it is so that I can decide what to wear, run a little bit? In no time the race was starting.
The swim was done in heats in the pool. I wasn't sure what time I would be starting so figuring out when to warm up was a little difficult. I took my bike out for one lap around the bike course and then jogged a bit around the indoor track