I race the Olympic distance triathlon at Deer Creek yesterday and was somewhat pleased with the results. I still don’t feel like I’m back to 100% after racing Triple T and didn’t have high expectations for this race because of that.
This race is the first one of a series of Olympic distance races that HFP puts on. I’ve never done this particular race before but I have done the HIM in September a few times so I am familiar with the course. It’s not a particularly fast course in my opinion but still one that suits me well.

First the swim was very choppy, not 1 foot wave choppy but like 6 or 8 inch choppy that was very irregular. I got bounced around a little bit but I can swim in conditions like that without issue unlike many people there that popped their head up every 5th stroke or so. I really didn’t expect that but I think it made it the swim a stronger event for me. The results are not up yet but according to my watch I was 26:25 into transition, that’s not great but OK considering the conditions.

One mistake I made was that normally I will run out of the water a ways before I take my wetsuit top off (Desoto pullover), I did that this time but while doing so I had to run up some steps and couldn’t do both at the same time. I may have lost 10 second or so because of that.

I was into transition fairly quickly and off on the bike. It was a long transition area and busy so I didn’t click off my watch when I exited, I remembered about a mile down the road. The bike was fairly flat and windy, I think it’s been windy every time I’ve been there for the half and this was no different. Fortunately a windy course suits me very well as I’m very small on the bike. I had a goal of riding just over 200 watts and did just that. I wasn’t holding back but wasn’t really pushing it tremendously hard either. I passed a lot of people out there, some of who would pass me back on the run. There were two hard spots on each loop of the course, one 90 foot climb and one 80 foot climb. They weren’t killer hills or anything but they were big enough to disrupt the rhythm and slow me down maybe 2 minutes or so.

Bike Course http://connect.garmin.com/activity/185313336

I came into the park probably a little too easy but I was trying to get my last gel in and take my feet out of my shoes at the same time. I was also going a little too fast at the dismount line for my liking and almost tripped up, it was kind of funny to me but I don’t think anyone else noticed, it was really a perfect dismount.

I had a fairly quick transition again and off on the run where I started off chasing some young guy but eventually he ran away from me. I was winded from the start but ran through it and kept a steady pace throughout the run. On the turn-around I saw someone I knew and wanted to beat and that motivated me to go as hard as I could, because of that I wound up negative splitting the run by ~20 seconds on what I thought was a so-so run for me. In hindsight, after going through my previous race results I found that it was actually my second fastest Olympic distance run I’ve ever done so I have to be happy with that since I went into the race feeling like I was about 90%.

Run Course http://connect.garmin.com/activity/185313355

So overall I was 2:16.xx and that’s a normal race result for me, good enough for 2nd place in AG for the day and some points in the series. The first guy went 1:57.xx so he was way out front.