Race Report: Half-Full Triathlon

I was treating this race as a long brick workout, since it took place on one few remaining weekends before Florida, and I needed to maximize my time. Therefore, no taper…I rode for 180 minutes the day before, and ran 5 miles the day after. I only competed in the Aqua Velo division, since I didn’t want the heavy pounding of 13.1 miles on my legs, but I did do a short brick run of 3 miles after I finished the bike.

Swim:

As the weather gets further into October, morning temperatures become a little less predictable. Race day was no exception…50 degrees and cloudy. I stood under the pavilion at Centennial Park, huddling in my warm-ups until my wave was scheduled to begin. There was a good deal of mist and fog building off the lake, so much so that you could barely see more than 100 yards. The Aqua-velo division was the last to go, and when my heat began to line up, I took my place ready to jump in, as the water temperature was about 15 degrees higher than the air. It was a time-trial start with pairs of swimmers leaving the dock every 5 seconds, which was a little odd, but gave us plenty of clean water to navigate once we got going.

I got into my stroke pretty quickly, navigated well around a small spit of land about 50 yards off the dock, and headed into the sun. Per usual, my ears got water in them and my goggles fogged over about half a mile into the course. Neither of these really has any serious effect on my race, but they are both pretty annoying, and I stopped twice to clear out the goggles. I need to get some ear plugs and goggle de-fogger for open water racing, without a doubt. A calm mind is a calm swim, and this annoys me to no end. I recovered enough to finish well over the final 500 yards, and exited the water in 26:xx. There was roughly a 400 yard run uphill into the transition area, which was included in our swim time. Not fun.

Swim Time: 28:36
Swim Place: 4/20

T1:
This was pretty uneventful, since I had such a long run into transition to take off my wetsuit/cap/goggles and think about the exact order I wanted to go through my paces and get out onto my bike as quickly as possible.

T1 time: 2:24

Bike:

The bike course is essentially the same as the Columbia Olympic triathlon, except two loops. Lots of rolling hills, a few steep climbs, and a handful of false flats…just the kind of course that plays to my strengths. I didn’t plan on hammering too hard, as this was supposed to be “just another training day” in the build up for Ironman Florida, so I focused on my heart rate for the first 20 miles, kept it in check, and raced the last 35 miles on rate of perceived effort (slightly above my IMF race pace). I also stuck with the same nutrition and fuel ratio I would be using in Florida; 1 bottle of concentrated EFS (6 scoops ~ 600 calories) and 3 gels giving me just under 1000 calories on the bike. Everything felt according to plan, and while I tried to keep my goal pace, it was hard not to pick it up a little bit over the last 10 miles, knowing that I didn’t have to run a half-marathon like most of the other people out here!

Bike Time: 3:01 @ 18.5mph
Bike Place: 4
Aqua-velo Overall: 3/20

When I got back to T2, I was surprised to see there was only one other bike on the Aqua Velo rack. About a minute or two after I finished, another guy came into transition to rack his bike a few down from mine, and congratulated me for “a podium spot”. I honestly never even expected to place, so this was pretty cool. It turns out I actually finished in 3rd place overall, not second, as the rider who won the overall had finished about 10 minutes ahead of everyone else and already left before I arrived. Regardless, it was a pretty cool feeling to make the overall podium, especially without tapering. As I took my spot to collect the award, the man with the microphone busted my chops, saying “so are you going to do the full race next year??” ‘Sure buddy…but I’m doing an Ironman in 3 weeks’, I thought as I laughed a bit to myself.

We stuck around to watch a friend who was racing, and talked with some of the other competitors. I got a chance to chat with a guy who runs another local tri-series that I have participated in a lot over the last 3-4 years, and it was good to hear his thoughts from a race-director’s perspective.

Oh yea…and free beers for the finishers. You can’t beat that…I will be doing this race again.