Sunday, September 9, 2007

Sat Sprint tri day

Great day for a sprint triathlon.

Rained onsite over night, high humidity, wet roads, and a great short course for all out racing. I lost winning my age group last year by 0.7 seconds, so I was pumped and a bit cocky going in. I've never felt so prepared and not nervous before a race before.
Course: 400m swim, 1.5 mi run (first 200m uphill), 12.8 mi bike, 1.5 mi run (couple rolling hills and ends on a long hill). I got no swim warmup, but I got in the lake to get wet and I stretched and had to be ready to go. I drove in after a couple steps and was out of the water in 7:22 (4th fastest swim out of 46 in age group). I fell twice trying to get up the slippery boat ramp, just after I heard the announcer say, "help folks that might slip getting out of the water." Nice. No one helped me. Anyway, I got on my socks and shoes in super fast time, put on my race number, and started running, then took off my swim cap. I ran with my goggles around my neck and swim cap in hand to the bike transition area. Saved a bunch of time doing this.
Ran the first 1.5 miles in 12:14, which is pretty fast considering the hills and having jumped out of the water and started running hard. My transition to the bike was super fast and I had the 4th best bike time (avg 21mph, which was pretty darn hilly). I had the the 3rd best transition between the bike and run and did the last 1.5 miles in 10:30 (7 min miles).
Final time: 1:08:07, which put me 2:05 faster then last year!! I was faster on just about everything and knew I would be. So this time would have given me the age group win last year, but this year my worst fear was realized. 5 other super fast jerks showed up and even though I smoked the course, I was only 6th in my age group (out of 46)!! They combined the beginners with the age groupers since 2 beginner males had times of 1:02 and 1:03 (sandbaggers).

All in all I was 24th overall out of 448 total racers. I was 23rd overall last year. I brought my "A" game and raced really well, but the competition was wicked today. Not much I can do about that.
I did beat all women as usual.

Enjoy some goofy pictures of me my lovely wife took:
Swim start, dive in baby!!

One of two speed bumps at end of bike that I had to jump, not cool.

Heading out for last run, looking very speedy.


Almost home!! I played leapfrog with the ACME guy on the bike (passing him on every hill) and we ran side by side the last 0.75 miles. I took off at the end and I jut couldn't keep the pace. He started 2 min after me and even though he beat me in the run finish by a few seconds, he beat me over all by about 2 minutes. Arf.



All done. Phew that sucked.







1 comment:

Kelly said...

In the top picture I first thought you were the guy in the front of the line wearing purple. Glad I was mistaken.

Congratulations on a great time!