Rick Aaronson's Grand Rapids OLY Report

Grand Rapids 2014 OLY Race Report

I’m not particularly proud to say that I placed first in my age group (6569) at Grand Rapids last weekend. I pretty much cherry picked a race to meet my objective which was to qualify for the 2014 US Nationals in Milwaukee. In my age group that requires a first place finish at most races. But although there was only one other finisher in my age group, I raced as if that guy was “that guy”. I finished 23:20 ahead of him, and 7:10 ahead of the first place finisher in the 6064 AG, improving on my 2012 Pleasant Prairie finish by about five minutes at 2:49:43. (PP was actually faster, but that bike course was short by 3.64 mi.  I had to do some math to derive my five minute PR.)

The weekend was filled with drama. Adrenalized and distracted at packet pickup on Saturday, while looking for my son Matt I walked into a plate glass window at Amway World Headquarters and took five stitches to my eyebrow. If that were not enough, as I put on my rented wetsuit, 10 minutes before my wave start, I discovered that there not only was no zipper cord. There was no zipper TAB. Effectively there was no zipper! The bike guys were kind enough to quickly put a strip of tape across my back. But that was literally a drag.

Swim was 1500m in 33:41, 2:16 slower than PP and partially attributable to the equipment malfunction as well as wetsuit stripping and a long run in to transition.

Bike 40 km was a one minute improvement over PP at 1:14:39 and an average speed of 20.1 mph. Both rides were among the first outdoor rides of the season and both under clubbed both wattage and cadence. Nonetheless the bike split was 106/225 gender, 131/339 overall – not bad for a 69 year old.

Training payoff was big time in the 10k run where I took over a full minute per mile off my PP pace and six minutes off my PP time, turning in a 55:52 at 8:59 min/m with a strong finish (8:23 min/mi for the last .7m). All that despite a course with real hills!!

Next step in the plan is to do well enough in Milwaukee to qualify for the 2015 Worlds under the age-up rules. Based on the 2013 Milwaukee times, I’m in the game!