Race day --- Sylvania Triathlon

Good race day, got close to most of my goals and the overall time is where I wanted to be. First, the day started off with a weird noise from the back of my car. 5 O'clock in the morning on race day and I think I have a bearing problem or something. Turns out it was a strap vibrating on my bike rack of which I used for the first time in quite a while. --------


The race, a very flat course with a NE wind, about 75 degrees and partly cloudy.--------


I get there later that I wanted to, not late, but not really early either. I get checked in (which went pretty fast) and find my assigned transition spot. It turns out to be an excellent spot at the end of the second rack from the bike exit. Get the bike set, wait in line 10 minutes to go to the bathroom and ran out of warm up time (the time I normally warm up on the bike). Get the transition area set, get the wetsuit on (yes, it turned out to be a wetsuit race) and ran down to the water. Got a good swim warm up and get staged the the start, I'm in the 4th wave. Boom!!! The cannon goes off and I'm sprinting in the water. I must have sprinted about 200 yds cuz I got tired out and had to settle into a groove earlier than I wanted to. I didn't think I was that far out but I guess I was and the sprint was longer than planned. Well, I'm winded but still settled in and found a pair of feet to follow and stuck with them. We swam by a bunch of people but I lost him about 200yds to go. Got out of the water and ran fairly well to the transition area. I wound up swimming 0:25:51, just better than my goal but the timing mat was at the transition area, not at the water exit so I was actually about a minute faster than that.


Out of T1 (1:16) and on the bike, rode out fast cuz of a slight tailwind, after a while we turned north into the wind on an abbrasive road, I caught several people there. Then we turned east again and into some more wind, it had to be a 10 to 15 mph headwind cuz it was killing most people but being as short as I am, it doesn't affect me as much, I probably past the most people on that section. About 1.5 miles to go I change gears so I bring my cadence up to about 100 rpm to get ready for the run. Bike time 1:08:54, average HR 168 bpm, not too far off of my goal of 1:08:00


Into T2, about average time for me, (1:33) then off on the run. Started at 8 min/mile pace then it dropped to 8:30 which I kept for the rest of the run. That's good for me but I expected better. My legs went as fast as they could carry me and that's all I could hope for. Run time of 0:52:13, average HR of 167 bpm.



Yes, I know the bike HR was higher than the run. Here is my explaination. At the beginning of the bike my HR was in the 170's for the first 5 miles or so then it settled in about 164. When I went into the wind it got up to about 169. For the run it flattened out very quickly and stayed in the high 160's the whole way. I sure didn't leave anything out on the course, not even on the run even though the HR numbers point that way. I seem to be able to handle the suffering on the bike much better than the run, maybe that's cuz I came from cycling. While training for Ironman, I practice running slow so I'm no surprised that my 10K times are not really fast, I will work on that next year. One word to decribe the way I felt during the race would be "Durable." Total time for the race 2:29:45, just under my goal of 2:30:00.