Triangle Ortho Sprint Tri Race Report

So first the short version for those with short attention spans.
Had an awesome day. Finally had good days in all 5 legs. When final results and official splits are posted, I will post them at the end of this blog, but for now I will give the splits on my watch.


Swim: 13:29
T1: 2:49
Bike: 33:01
T2: 1:11
Run: 26:14
Total: 1:16:44

So on to the long version.
I did this race two years ago and my time was 1:22:46. I didn't check my old times before the race, or read the race report like I normally do for repeat races. I remembered it well enough so I didn't think I needed to, and fortunately I didn't.
I had an excellent prerace brick yesterday and was feeling really psyched up for this race. Went to bed around 10, luckily I had a really busy day so sleep came quickly.
Woke up at 4am, but since this was a local race and I had packed up the car last night I didn't need to rush. I wanted to eat breakfast at 5, so I could leave at 6 to get there in time for a good spot. Got in the car and cranked up the heavy metal from the 80's. Got there in plenty of time, claimed my spot on the rack, got my chip and body marking done, used the port o john's before the crowd and had time to chit chat before heading out for a warmup jog.

Swim: 13:29 - this was a time trial start for an open water swim. the lake isn't big enough to handle a mass wave, so we started 1 person every 5 seconds. I like this better than a pool because there are no walls and you don't get the scrum at the beginning. After last weeks debacle I was mentally prepared for this week and did not go out too fast. Instead I felt smooth and steady from the start. I sited often and swam a good straight line. With 200 yards to go I started kicking really hard. There is a big hill that we have to run up to get to the transition area so I wanted the legs ready. Took 1 minute off my time from 2 years ago.

T1: 2:49 - legs were good on the hill and I was able to get the wetsuit off most of the way and actually ran the whole way to the bike. Once there I took at quick drink, got the suit off shoes on, helmet, glasses and away we go.

Bike: 33:01 - still recovering from the swim and now it's time to go hard on the bike. After about two miles there was a really long uphill. I passed about 5 people on this hill. In fact for the whole bike I think I passed about 15, and got passed by only 2. There was a lot of pain on this course, but I really wanted to get as close to 20 mph average as possible. I was on track until that last really long hill. I think I ended at just under, but that included the run to and from the bike rack. I'll count that as a win.

T2: 1:11 - my only goal here was to not forget my race number. So mission accomplished. No rest here either. Get it done and get going.

Run: 26:14 - After about 1/4 mile of nice downhill and flat the course started going up. and it kept going up for about a mile. I was running hard and hoping to get close to an 8:30 average pace, so when I saw 9 minutes at the 1 mile mark I wasn't happy, but I knew that mile 3 was mostly downhill and I just needed to hang on until the downhill starts. When we finally got to the downhill part, around 1.5, I really wanted to take it easy and recover, but I also wanted to break 27 for this run and that 9 minute first mile told me to get the lead out, so no rest and hit mile 2 in 17:23, that felt much better, but I still needed to hammer out mile 3 because I knew there was a 1/4 mile uphill at the end right before the finish. When I hit the hill, I still had enough to power up it and cross mile 3 at 25:40, then finished off the run with all I had left. Not quite a sprint, but it was close.

So finally I managed to put it all together and have a really good race. Made my goal times for all 3 sports and the total time.

Next up is the Glen Eagles challenge 6 hour adventure race on Saturday. Then another good training block before a sprint and my A race Oly tri in June.

**************************************************************************
Official Results Posted.
Age Group out of 19
total/rank/time - swim r/t - T1 - Bike r/t - t2 - Run rank/time
5/1:16:44.5 2/13:30 5/2:51 4/32:58 8/1:14 11/26:14
Overall Male out of 152
46 32 46 33 80 92