Island Lake Sprint Triathlon 5-28-2011 Race Report
What a great way to start off the season! This was my first race with power and all that feedback during the race. I treated the week like a regular training week and went into the race with a day's rest. The weekend before I had my first Big Training Day and it really wiped me out. I trusted work works and got on with my weekly training.
Pre-race I got to the site early with 6.5 hours of sleep and a light smoothie for breakfast. Transition setup was good and I had time to warm-up with a jog and a 300m swim before my start. I was a bit worried I'd be out of my depth as I just age grouped up to 40 this year.
S800m, B12.4mi, R5K
For the swim I felt really good in the water and I watched both under 40 waves go out. I lined up with the bouys instead of with the pack and got very calm. In the first 200m I got my sighting straightened out and had to swim over and/or around two groups of people as the pack swam toward the bouy line and had caught up to the second wave of swimmers. My bouy turns were really tight and I had a great feeling when I caught the first wave at 400m. I felt so psyched I went inside the bouy line for about 100m and lost a few seconds. Pulled it out and passed 75% of the first wave in the last 400m. Okay I am not a great swimmer, so this blew me away. I came out 22nd on the swim overall, this was crazy although I didn't know it at the time. My T-pace is 105s/100yds and I turned in 98s/100yds for the race. Time to level up!
T1 was a bit of a hash - I struggled with my new wetsuit even after having practiced with it a couple of times. Left about a minute and a half on the table. What was up with that? More practice and more body glide.
On the bike, my calves and hams felt really tight about a mile and a half in. This was my first race with the power meter, so I trusted it to level out my work on the 3 medium (3-6%) hills out and back. I geared down at the bottom and up at the top, just like my race rehearsals and I was still passing folks who were pushing too hard left and right. That did me good, but I think I left 2-3 minutes on the bike course and could have pushed harder as my legs loosened up. Still I was a minute better than last year with gas in the tank. Work works!!
T2 was a breeze - 36s and partly made up for T1.
Into the run, there's a medium hill right away and my calves got really twitchy, so I dropped to pace +30s for the hill climb and everything started to warmup from there. Went from 8:06 to 7:26 pace in the next mile and held steady until the end of the race. There was room for improvement here as well by at least 30s.
1:18:13 PB on the course and 3rd in my age group. I treated this race as a B-race and could have crushed it by possibly 4 minutes more if it were an A.
Next year I want 1st!!