Race Report and Technological Disaster

Faithful reader, I have suffered a technological disaster of epic size -- both our phones, our car, and our main computer all went south at the same time! Just around the Reston Sprint Triathlon as well, which was special. Happily, the majority of the tech issues seem to be sorted out, and Fernando is up and running again with a new battery, here's hoping it keeps him happy over the summer. On to the race report!

As you may recall, I had decided that I needed to let it all hang out for this race. I am sorry to report that I wasn't quite able to do that -- it turns out I've been training my mentality too hard at the idea of pacing myself for a strong finish to really cut loose for a sprint. I suppose this is not, in and of itself, a bad thing, but it led to a result that stings, for reasons which will become apparent momentarily.

Results up front: I finished 31st, in a field of over 650. So, Woot! In my age group, 40 - 44, I finished 5th of 38. Overall time was 1:06:07.

Swim was 400 meters in a pool, with people starting every 10 seconds. I passed a number of people in the water, and would likely have had a faster swim time without the traffic, but, whatevs, not too much faster. 7:39, 66th overall, 5th in my age group.

T1 was my event -- at 59 seconds, I was 5th overall, and 1st in my age group. the key here was no socks. The fastest time of the day was B, at 47 seconds.

Bike -- 12 miles, on a three-loop course. I felt like I kicked butt here, but in hindsight there were places where I could have gone harder. The difficulty for me was that I was constantly passing people -- there was no one for me to battle with. Because of the massively spread out start time and the three-loop nature of the course, people were constantly getting onto the course as I made my 2nd and 3rd circuit. Anyway, my time was 32:34, 36th overall, and 7th in my age group. That is an average of 22.1 mph over the course, which is more than 3 mph faster than last month. Although this is an area where I can continue to improve, I think its an area that has shown tremendous growth.

T2 -- wasn't my day for T2. 90 seconds, 82nd overall and 12th in my AG. I didn't even wear socks! I did make some errors -- I didn't get out of my bike shoes while still on the bike, I went to the wrong rack at first, and my shoes were still in the plastic bag that kept them from getting wet before the race.

Run -- 3.1 miles, 23:26, 35th overall and 4th in my age group. Those were 7:33 / mile, which is actually pretty fast for me; I aspire to do a 5k in 21 minutes, but its probably going to have to be less "rolling" than this course was. Also, the miles weren't marked, so I didn't have much clue as to where I was in the race.

When all was said and done, I missed 3rd place in my AG by 20 seconds. First let me say that this was a "C" race, that I am not training for sprints, and that as a consequence what I want to takeaway from this race doesn't have anything to do with a piece of acrylic that says "3rd place 40 - 44 AG." Yeah. Having said that, missing the podium by 20 seconds sucks. Especially because the kid who started in the water 10 seconds in front of me, whom I passed in the water, caught up to me about halfway through the run. He wasn't running much faster than me, but enough that I decided to let him go after trying to hang with him for about 2 minutes. He ended up finishing 1 minute ahead of me, in 25th place. If I had battled to hang with him, just a bit longer . . . Ah well!

So, the training days are getting longer now, and we turn our focus to building bike endurance. I am trying to get in two 5+ hour bike rides per week, which is going to be a challenge. The idea of running a marathon off the bike, after an 80 minute swim, still freaks me out, but I have 3+ months left of training.

Of course, we are moving to a new apartment at some point in there, and I might want to write a couple of pages on my dissertation (Hi Mom!) at some point . . . well, I'm gonna keep on keeping on. I have adjusted my sights for the finish time of the IM down from 11 hours to 12, based on the race results and my ability to train. I've started teaching my summer class, and that's going well - - inasmuch as I have only 3 students, it shouldn't be too much work -- and J is almost done with school. Once we have a place picked out, we'll get to the serious packing. If you want to come help out, just drop me a line! :)