Here is the link to Age Group Results. (I'm racing 40 this year)
Here we go! My first triathlon of 2010!
We actually left NJ Saturday morning at 10:10. We had planned on leaving at 10. This is already going well, typically we run hours behind plan. Instead of driving the dreaded I95. We go west out to Harrisburg PA then south towards Baltimore. There was heavy traffic but no major slow downs.
Arrive on site for packet pickup. I'm standing directly behind Andrew Yoder. Pro. 21 years old. The race directors were talking to him the entire time. With good reason, he ends up winning the next day. Check out his results. I can't imagine riding that course at 26.6mph on a rainy day.
Next we drive down to transition to rack the bike. This is when we find out that our SLR Camera was broken. We had to go to the back up point and shoot. Better than nothing but not nearly as fun for Genine.
I've got the course map with me and I'm looking to see which way we go to start the bike and the run. We walk around a bit to make sure we know how everything is connected then we go and check into the hotel. Then we are off to dinner with a friend from college. I don't think we've seen each other since 1992. I had posted on facebook that I was going to Columbia MD and she lived close by so we made dinner plans.
Back to the Hotel. Maija and Adam had checked in, so we stopped up to visit them. They brought Cooper and Frito along as well. They are good dogs.
Then time to zzz. I think I was asleep by 10.
4AM wakeup. I really didn't have the ability to make my normal breakfast. Fortunately I had made hard boiled eggs so I had a few of those without much of the yolks. After that it was largely Cliff bars and gatorade. Not ideal for me. I should have thought this out better.
It was raining but I figured I may as well just go down to transition and get a good parking space. This way if it's pouring during the race, Genine won't have to walk too far to get to the car.
I had my clear lens glasses for the bike. I put both my bike shoes and running shoes in a plastic bag to keep them dry. If I can have dry shoes for the run, that's going to be much more comfortable. I also had socks for my running shoes, sockless is not going to be an option today.
They kept saying to lower the tire pressure to give you better grip on the wet roads. I go to let air out of my tire and I notice the back brake is bumped onto the tire. It wasn't like that last night... (have to remember to always check race morning). Anyhow, I let a quick blast out of the tires. Then when I squeezed the tire, it felt too soft. The volunteers had pumps so I flagged one down so I could check witha pressure gauge. The front was 70 psi rear was 80. That's too low. I pumped them back up to 100. Glad I checked.
I also had a plastic shopping bag with me to help get into the wetsuit. If you are wet or sweaty, it's really tough pulling those sleeves over the arms and legs. Putting your foot/hand into the bag first then pulling the suit on over it makes it a whole lot easier.
We were at the car quite a bit before the race because of the rain. I put the wetsuit on at the car just a few minutes before walking to the swim start.
It's funny how difficult it is to find a person in a wetsuit in a crowd of people wearing wetsuits. Maija had to have walked within 5 feet of us at the start of her race but we didn't see her to wish her luck.
I was in wave 6, starting about 30 minutes after Maija. My pre-race nerves always show on my HR monitor. I was averaging 95-105 bpm just waiting for my wave to be called.
As we were waiting, the pros and elite waves were swimming back past us. The first place swimmer had a sizeable lead. Turns out that was Rebeccah Wassner. Not long after that one of the elites makes a wrong turn on the swim course. He passed the buoy just out from the swim start and headed back in to the start line. The people in the safety kayak didn't see him for at least a minute or so. He had to have lost 2 minutes or more for that mistake.
Finally I'm in the water to start. We have at least 6 minutes. I try to get a long warmup in but I start to realize if I wait too long, I'm not going to get anywhere near the the starting line. So I cut it short and work myself towards the line.
The gun goes off and the washing machine begins.
I can't find myself in this video I just thought people might want to see the fun of a swim start.
The swim is a long counter clockwise rectangle (basically) which is perfect for me as I tend to track left. I need to work on pushing hard for a determined number of strokes or something because this start was pretty hilarious. There are 218 of us starting. I thought I had a good start and had some space so I started concentrating on lengthening my stroke and establish the distance pace. I swear I took about 3 strokes and was suddenly mobbed. I was getting hit from every direction. Legs, head, arms colliding. I don't put my goggles under my swim cap. I think I need to consider this in the future. I haven't had a problem but that was my concern as I was being clobbered. If this was non-wetsuit, I might be more concerned about all the contact here but honestly, I think it's fun. I do hope to improve to the point of being able to leave that mess behind someday tho'.
I'm not positive of the distance (500m?) of battling with the pack. Finally as we reach the buoy that sends us back the other direction, I have some room to get into the groove and focus on powerful efficient swimming. I eventually notice a guy with very obvious red sleeves has been 10-15m ahead of me for quite some time. So I decide I'm going to try and close the distance and get onto his feet. Sadly this didn't work out at all. I couldn't close the gap. Ah well the real trick at this point was to pick good lines to avoid the other color swim caps (AKA the weak swimmers from previous waves). This I negotiated well and I got to the swim exit feeling good. I look at my watch and see 26:xx. Well nothing new there, that just seems to be my pace. Moving on.
(time was 26:27 which is a 1:45/100m pace.)
First concern or the bike is running up a wet grassy hill with bike shoes on. This was easier than I expected. I ran up on my toes (sort of) and I was off. Genine said many people had jammed up cleats at the start. (not good conditions for speedplay for sure, I've got the delta clips). At the start of the bike, I really focused on giving myself time to adjust. Which I feel I did somewhat successfully. I say somewhat because I raced the bike leg in upper zone 4 HR. I was well aware that it was happening but my legs were not complaining about the effort so I figured I'd roll with it. I was incredibly cautious on the bike because of the wet conditions. I don't have the experience to be aggressive here. There seemed to be an unusually high number of people with flats on the course. Snake bites from the low tire presure? I became much more focused on avoiding bad road once I thought about this. I pass a guy riding my exact bike. I say "Nice Bike" to him as I go by, it took him a few seconds to realize why I said it. Then he laughed. I also passed a guy riding a steel frame with shifters on the down tubes. I say "Awesome bike" as I go by and he was obviously glad to have someone take note. As his response was "Purple dinosaur baby! Purple dinosaur!" LOL. Once I realize I'm on the home stretch to the bike finish, I work on leg speed. I'm feeling pretty good about the bike considering the conditions. I never bothered to figure out what my goal time was for this ride so knowing my split here was meaningless to me. It turned out being a 1:20:14 for a 19 mph avg. 41k/25.5 miles.
Onto the run. As I said even with my heels bandaged up, I was going to take the time to put socks on in transition. There have been races in the past where I had to slow myself down at the start of the run because I'd go out too hot. This was not one of those days. My legs felt like lead. I kept telling myself, first mile is always bad, just let the blood redistribute and all will be good. Sadly that wasn't what happened. My HR when I run is typically 180-185 for a good pace run. My average HR for the first mile was 164 and it was hilly! My pace was 8:26. 2nd mile 7:54, 167 Avg HR. Is my HR monitor not working?? This is crazy low for me. No the numbers are changing it's the real deal. Mile 3 more climbing 8:33 pace and 170 HR avg. Come on legs!!! GOOOOO
Mile 4 8:20 pace. 172 HR Avg. Mile 5 the steep downhill is over now it's gradual downhill to flat. The legs are hating me but I start pushing. I missed the next mile marker for my split. Quads are starting to feel like they could cramp on me. There is no stopping then, if I stop they will probably lock up. As I near the finish I hear Genine yelling for me, I see there are a couple people I might be able to beat to the finish. I go into an all out sprint and manage to pass both of them. (I need to save this race on my watch so I can download the graphs, this run was a mess and I'd like to see it).
The volunteer at the finish says they need to take the chip off my ankle, I step off to the side and stop. She looks at me and says we have to go further down the chute. I said well now that I've stopped that is going to take some effort. My right quad was twitching, if I took weight off of it, it was likely to cramp badly. Eventually I got out of there.
My 10K was finished in 50:20 or an 8:06 pace. Yikes! I think that is the toughest run course I've done in a triathlon.
Final time 2:41:54
62 of 218 age group. 55th swim, 85th bike, 74th run.
361 of 1532 overall. 380th swim, 437th bike, 421 run. (sum is better than the parts).
I was hoping to meet Laurel Wassner after the race. The fact that she had just won the race and was with her family made it difficult for me to decide to go over and introduce myself but I decided I wasn't likely to have the chance again any time/year soon. So I went over and said hello. I'm glad that I did. Very nice family and I love that they race for a cause.
(I guess I should add this for people that haven't read my blog before. Laurel contacted me last year about a photo I took of her at a race and it ended up being used in a Nike Livestrong campaign)
After the race, Genine and I went down to visit a friend from High School who lives just 30 minutes further south. Again another last minute decision as a result of the facebook post. We stayed at their place for the night before heading back to NJ.
Great weekend! Can't wait for Mooseman week!
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