gokubi.com

Things have been pretty quiet here as I was on vacation for much of the month of July. I put work completely out of my mind (well, almost completely, more on that later). But I didn’t put triathlon out of my mind–I did 3 races in 3 weeks!

Here are some things I learned:

• I’m better at short races than long ones
• 55 degree water doesn’t really bother me
• Once you try a singlet, you’ll never go back

Here’s my first race report.

God Bless America Super-Sprint Triathlon, Wautoma, Wisconsin

The city of Wautoma, in central Wisconsin, has a population of about 3000, but that probably increases 5 fold in the summer when all the lakes are filled with visitors from the south–mainly Milwaukee and Chicago. We vacationed about 10 minutes from Wautoma, and our visit happened to coincide with the 3rd annual running of the God Bless America Triathlon on the 4th of July.

I surely couldn’t pass up doing a race with a name like that, only 10 minutes from our vacation cottage. So my wife and I signed up for this insanely short race–200m swim (!), 9 mile bike, and 2 mile run.

It turned out to be a lot of fun, and is probably the only triathlon I’ll ever do with a 7 foot tall fiberglass steer in the transition area. About two hundred hardy souls braved the 75 degree water of Silver Lake, and took in the beautiful rolling countryside around the lake.

I’ve never been anywhere near the front of a triathlon. I’m always solidly in the middle of the pack. I’ll paraphrase Joe Friel–one thing you can’t control in Triathlon is who else is going to show up at the race. I’m used to getting my butt kicked by Seattlite triathletes with their $7000 bikes and high VO2 maxes. But this race was on a holiday, in northern Wisconsin, and was crazy-short, so maybe I had a chance to do well.

I can’t really describe what the swim was like. It was over in 3 minutes. I just flailed as fast as I could. I was 7th out of the water and 4th out of transition on the bike. I moved up to second and was a couple bike lengths behind the leader and the motorcycle escort for a mile before he slowly pulled away from me. I ended the bike second overall. Unheard of!

I’m not a fast runner, so I’m used to getting passed on the run. But I vowed that I could go really hard for 2 miles–only 2 miles! I made it about a mile before I was passed, putting me in 3rd place. After the turn around I saw that the guy in 4th place wasn’t far behind me. He caught me with about half a mile left.

But, I didn’t let him go. I stayed behind him and did something I’ve never done before, I passed him back, with about 100m left. I really wanted to place, since I wasn’t sure I’d ever have the opportunity again. I mean, I didn’t want to have to travel to Cutbank, Montana for a race in February or something like that…

Right after I passed him, I saw Beth running out the other way and gave her a high five, even though I was dying. I’m sure that is what kept him from catching me. (He’d have his revenge in a week…)

Beth had a great race even though she hadn’t been training for it. She got really fired up by the racing aspect and remembered how much fun she had in her previous tris.

I ended up 3rd by 3 seconds! I won a sweet t-shirt with a red white and blue eagle head on it, a trophy, and 16 ounces of Heed gel. The race was well-run and a ton of fun. I hope to place in a race again, but I will have to search out the rare opportunities like this one, and hope all those athletes faster than me are at a barbecue or something.

Overall Place: 3
Age Group Place: 1
Overall Time: 41:57
Swim: 3:12
T1: 1:11
Bike: 23:26
T2: 0:46
Run: 13:22 (fastest I’ve run since a dog chased me when I was 10)

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 24th, 2008 at 7:01 am and is filed under Triathlon. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.