PRE-RACE
Well, the first triathlon of the season did not proceed as expected. The weather forecast for Saturday was a low of 27 and a high of 52. The week of the race, the race organizers announced a duathlon option consisting of a 5k run/27 mile bike/ 5k run. I opted to stick with the triathlon format using a sleeveless wetsuit, as that is what I trained for. I planned to change in the warming tent for T1 into full winter biking gear.
For breakfast I had an apple, a banana and a Pro Bar Peanut butter and chocolate flavor (430 cals, 10g protein). At 7:30 a.m. on race day, the air temperature was 41 and water temp was reported to be 60. However, the extremely high winds created a lot of chop on the lake and the race organizers were unable to properly deploy the watercraft so the swim was canceled about 20 minutes before the start and about 2 minutes after I got my wetsuit on. The duathlon format was mandatory. Having the benefit of ignorance as to how much harder duathlons are than triathlons, I blithely changed into running gear and lined up for the time trial style run start.
No swimming today.
RUN #1 (5k) -- 34:17, Rank 214/220, pace 10:37 min/mi (course was 3.2 miles per my Garmin)
The first run was pretty uneventful. I was a little nervous as, due to travel and my knee injury, I hadn’t run since March 17! Due to the cold morning temperatures, I wore my tri shorts, a long sleeve shirt and a running jacket. I had a stinger waffle before the run. I was able to maintain a steady sub-11 min/mile pace, keeping my hr between 147 and 167, depending on hills. Splits were: 10:48 / 10:25 / 10:49 and 9:36 for the last 2/10 mile. Elev gain was 223 feet. When I got to T1 though, my legs definitely felt the effort expended on the run.
T1 – 8:48
Due to the unseasonable cold and high winds, I took time in transition to put on leg-warmers, shoe covers, which were tight and hard to zip up in the back, a ss cycling jersey over my long sleeve running shirt, a cycling jacket, gloves and a Gore beanie. This all took a lot of time, especially the stupid shoe covers.
BIKE (27 miles) – 2:09:27, Rank 209/220, avg speed 12.6 mph
The bike was hard. The course was extremely windy and there was 1,079 feet of climbing. I have never gone for a 5k run before biking and my legs felt tired from mile 1. Every time I felt like I was cruising at a decent speed, I hit a hill or wind or both. I got passed so much that for a time I considered legally changing my name to “On Your Left”. The bike course was two loops and towards the end of the first loop, many people shouted encouragement to me as they were passing me that I was “almost at the end”. They did not realize that while they were almost at the end of loop 2, I was still only on loop 1. While I was working at controlling my bike in the wind with 34mm rims and dressed like I was about to scale K2, some guy passed me with a rear disk wheel wearing nothing but a tri-suit. At some point, around mile 21 I think, I heard an ambulance pull up behind me. I moved over to the right to let it pass. When it never passed me, I realized that it was sweeping and I was definitely the last one on the bike course. This was, however, not a big surprise. There was a big hill before the final turn, and after I climbed that hill the second time I was indeed almost done. I saw my wife and my kids sitting on the grass a I biked in towards transition and they saw me and waved. That was nice. I turned in to transition and dismounted before the dismount line. 2 legs down, 1 to go. I did stick to my nutrition plan on the bike. I had 400 calories total of Tailwind in two water bottles and finished over 1.5 bottles, a stinger waffle in mile 1 (160 cals) and then a Huma gel every 9 miles (3x100 cals each).
T2 – 4:20
Apparently, taking everything off was a lot easier than putting it all on. I also saved time by not taking off my helmet. The kind people at Jones Racing Company noticed this before I left transition and offered to take it from me and bring it back to my bike.
RUN #2 (5k) – 41:32, Rank 207/220, pace 12:58 min/mi.
I ran in my tri-shorts and long sleeve shirt and gloves and kept my short sleeve bike jersey on as wind vest instead of putting on a jacket. I waved at my family as I ran back out onto the course. My legs and lower back hurt on this run. Quite a lot. I knew that I could run the whole course and that I wouldn’t have to stop or walk, but that I wouldn’t be able to match my pace from run #1. I just kept moving forward and didn’t look at my watch once the whole run, as there wasn’t all that much I would have been able to do with the information. I knew I was running slow and that I couldn’t run faster, so I just kept a steady pace and kept on putting one foot in front of the other. Apparently, if you keep moving, you do get to the finish chute eventually. The run seemed to take forever. After I got to the turn-around I didn’t see anyone else on the run course for the last half of the run. When I ran back on to the road for the last half-mile, my friend Amy was driving in as she arrived just in time to see me finish. She offered me a lift and I accepted, but she pulled away before I could climb through the open window of her car so I had no choice but to run to the finish. I was really, really happy to see the finish chute. I got an enormous cheer from everyone waiting at the finish to see the last finisher and that felt nice. Everyone at the race was very nice and supportive. It felt very good to stop.
My first triathlon hardware.
TOTAL TIME: 3:38:23, Rank 5/5 novice masters male, 212/212 overall for finishers. 4 people DNFd after run #1 and 4 more people DNF’d on or after the bike. I feel proud to have finished it and feel that I have come a long way since this time last year.