Another race, another podium!
Sunday I did the second of my 3 triathlons this season. It was just a local sprint near our cabin, but a fun race that I've done several times, so it's neat to see my ongoing improvement. It was a picture perfect day, ~78 degrees, sunny, and no wind to speak of. I was rolling solo, because none of the kids wanted to get up early to make the 30 minute drive to the race site.
Last year I finished 3rd in my AG for my first ever podium, so my goal this year was to move up to at least 2nd and to make a run at the top 10 (I was 18th last year). My training has consisted of repeating the OS including NOT swimming, and I was coming off a week or so on vacation where I only managed to run a couple of days, so I was a little skeptical that I would make my goals. When I took the bike for a little shakedown ride Saturday, the dang PM wasn't working. The head unit reads "Host" like it does when you connect it to the computer to download the ride, and despite trying everything I could think of or find on the web, I never did get it to work. I'm naturally kind of lazy, so I knew w/o the lash of the watts staring me in the face I would have a hard time going as hard as I should.
ANYWAY...on to the race...
Swim - I surprised myself in my last local sprint by having the 7th (out of ~125) fastest swim time. This race was a bit longer, though, and I couldn't run the shallow bits. I was in the 2nd wave, so I swam through a bunch of folks and got passed by a few fast folks. It was allegedly ~500 yds, and I came in 8:14, 4th in AG and 29th OA. Uneventful but for swallowing a bit of water.
Bike - Smoked the transition in 39 seconds (tied for 1st in AG), jumped on the bike and hit the road. It's a pretty hilly course, but other than that, nothing to note. I went by a bunch of folks in the first 5 miles or so, and got passed by only 1. He ended up being the only guy the entire ride that went past me, and I caught a few more folks as the race went on. I went hard, but I knew I wasn't giving it my all, because I wasn't breathing nearly hard enough and my heart didn't feel like it was going to beat out of my chest like it usually does in a 40 minute max effort. Sure enough, I came in at only 21.7 mph, for a time of 43:28. That was good enough for 4th in my AG (15th OA) and a good 1 mph slower than the sprint I did a couple of weeks ago against most of the same folks. Lazy @#$! Got to get that PM fixed before the next race in 3 weeks!
Run - Smoked T2 in 36 seconds (2nd in AG). Now some of you long courses may say, "big deal...the race isn't won in transitions". Au contraries my LSD friends! The guy that finished fourth in my AG had a total transition time of 1:54. My total time was only 1:15. I beat the guy by 35 seconds. SO...today anyway the race for 3rd in the 40-49 year old AG competition at the prestigious Hoot Lake Triathlon in Fergus Falls, Minnesota was won by the fact that I got my shoes on faster than the next guy! The run itself was no walk in the park. Pretty hilly, but mercifully short. I got passed by only 2 guys, but only passed 1 myself. The absolute shame of the race was that at ~mile 1 I came up on a guy who was walking. As I was about 20 yards away he started jogging. He stayed about that far in front of me the whole race until the last hill when he pulled away just a little bit. You guessed it...that was the guy who finished 2nd in my AG. He beat me by all of 14 seconds! I can't believe I didn't summon the guts to pass the guy, even if I didn't know he was standing between me and the coveted #2 slot! DANG! And he's the only guy that transitioned faster than me too...by 6 seconds! 26:06 for the 3.3 miles (7:55 pace)...again under the pace I ran at the race a few weeks back, but this one was probably more due to the hills, so don't feel quite so bad (except for the 14 fookin' seconds back on the #2 guy!). 36th OA/6th AG
I think I posted this last year, but I thought I would include my race history for those of you that are new to EN, especially if you're feeling like you're the slow one around here.
| 2003 | 2007 | 2009 | 2010 | |
| Swim | 0:08:22 | 0:08:45 | 0:09:12 | 0:08:14 |
| T1 | 0:01:54 | 0:01:24 | 0:01:00 | 0:00:39 |
| Bike | 0:59:14 | 0:48:53 | 0:43:32 | 0:43:28 |
| T2 | 0:01:30 | 0:01:11 | 0:00:53 | 0:00:36 |
| Run | 0:41:11 | 0:28:55 | 0:25:54 | 0:26:06 |
| Total | 1:52:11 | 1:29:08 | 1:20:31 | 1:19:03 |
| AG Place | 27 | 11 | 3 | 3 |
| OA Place | 113 | 49 | 18 | 16 |
Worth noting that in 2003 when I did this race the guy who finished right in front of me (in 112th place!) was 71 years old, and my run pace was an almost unbelievable 12:29/mile! The 2007 result was using an online plan from one of the mavens of LSD that I used for my first HIM. 2009 and 2010 are EN driven results. Not a ton of improvement from 2009 - 2010 other than swim and transitions, but that was enough to be me a PR by almost 1:30. Given how little I've been swimming the last year or so, I'll take 1 minute there! Still plenty of room to get better on the bike and the run. Heck, if I had just done the paces I did in my last race I would have knocked off at least 3-4 minutes which would have been just enough to crack the top 10 and get 2nd in my AG! Need to figure out how to run 6:30s off the bike if I'm ever going to win my AG, though!
Won't be doing the race next year, since I'm planning to grab a community slot for Lake Placid (if they don't sell out before I have time to get over there and get registered!
Comments
Bill,
Nice race. Keep up the improvements and the podium's too.
Gordon
You are killing it this year! Congratulations on the podium!
Good stuff Bill! Smoking transition times. I feel your pain with the 14 seconds epiphany. Every second counts!
Now back to the T1 time. Were you wearing a wetsuit?!?