gokubi.com

I survived my second Olympic distance triathlon today. And I knocked 27 minutes off my previous time, so I’m pretty pleased.

The race was down in the shadow of Mt. Rainier, and the weather sure felt that way. It was 50 and raining as I set up for the race. I did a warm up run, but didn’t pull the bike out at all ahead of the start. I was planning on doing a full warm up, but bailed because of the weather–I couldn’t face the water before the start!

We ended up having to stand in our wetsuits at the water for 20 minutes as the race director gave instructions, and then launched 3 waves before mine. My wave looked like about 100 guys. What I didn’t realize was that this race was an official qualifier for USAT National championships, so the field was a bit stacked. The start showed the level of competition and it was a bit of a madhouse. I hung back from the initial rush, but there wasn’t any avoiding it. I’m a middle of the pack swimmer, so I ended up in the middle of the pack. Each time we came to a buoy the field pinched down and I was reminded of my basketball days, boxing out underneath.

The water was cold, but I didn’t really notice in the heat of it all. It was almost half a mile before I really got into a groove, and then the swim was half over. I faded a bit at the end, but made it out of the water in 29 minutes, which was about what I had hoped for.

The transition to bike was good. I didn’t have the wobbliness I had last tri and got onto my Felt in just a couple minutes. Then things got cold. It was drizzling, and turns out going 20 miles per hour in cold wet conditions causes your hands to stop working very well. I had trouble eating and drinking on the bike because of it. But, because it was so cold, dehydration wasn’t really an issue.

The bike was awesome! As I predicted, my new wheels subtracted greatly from my time. There were a few points with a headwind where I could tell it would have stopped me dead on my old bike. The bike was perfect–it was a bit hard to shift, but that was because my hand’s didn’t work, not because the bike didn’t!

The transition to run was smooth as well. I tried to put on my running socks, but bailed due to dexterity problems, and headed out for four laps around the lake. It was a bit muddy on the trail, but running through the woods on soft needles was nice. It was strange passing the finish 3 times, but the fourth was sweet, and I had a nice 250 meter kick that made me feel like I had something left.

As I said, my time of 2:33:00 was 27 minutes faster than my last Olympic distance. The courses were different, but I feel like they were pretty comparable, so I’m really stoked. I finished 18th in my age group, but like I said it was a stacked field…

Can’t wait for the next one!

Update: Official results are in.

I finished 87th out of 182 finishers with a total time of 2:35:32.

Rank in age group: 18 out of 25
Swim split: 0:29:40, place of 97th, 1.5K
T1: 3:15
Bike Split: 1:15:32 (19.8 mph), place of 89th, 40K
T2: 2:36
Place after Bike: 94th
Run Split: 0:44:28 (8 min mi), place of 79th, I think this leg was shortened to 9K because of weather…

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 17th, 2007 at 4:48 pm and is filed under Triathlon. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.