Recreational Reading

This is part two of the results from the Elysian Rookie’s Triathlon. The swim leg is covered by part one.

Transition one

It took longer moving at T1 then I would have liked. I had problems pulling the jersey over my head and required help. Then I realized that I didn’t put the HRM strap on and decided to skip it. One thing that I did here which I would pay for later is double knot the bike shoelaces. Dumb. There wasn’t a transition zone where you had to run out of; you just hoped on and biked out of the parking lot. There was some traffic in the parking lot as transition helpers or spectators were starting to move to the next transition, but it wasn’t bad.

The bike leg

I wasn’t really worried about the bike leg. I didn’t have much cycling fitness, but I thought that I would at least be able to do enough on the bike to be respectable. I should mention that I have only one other bike race experience. I did one TNT event last year. In that effort, I went out to fast and spent much of the race gasping. In this effort, I wanted to go out slower and build speed.

It rained much of the time that I was in the water, though I didn’t realize it. Once I got to the bike and got ready to go, the skies really opened up. It rained basically the whole bike leg. I’m not sure weather it helped more then it hurt, but after a while it was a nuisance. I took the Giro and it rode well. I still need to replace the hoods as the shifter on the right misses quite frequently. The ride felt fast and stable regardless of the water on the road.

The ride itself was uneventful to the extent that I don’t really remember much about it. The trouble spots were trying to make the turnaround while carrying to much speed — I had miscalculated the effectiveness of the breaks on the wet rims — and one particular rise on the way back that zapped me a bit and pushed my speed down to about 10 or 12 MPH. My top speed was 36MPH and I was above 20 the whole way out and much of the way back. I don’t know how fast this leg went because I had forgotten to reset my cyclometer. I was happy with this leg. It was reasonably paced — hard enough without being to hard. I only got passed once and I passed a whole herd of folks.

Transition two

We had planned on meeting at the end of the transition area. In retrospect, we should have tried to be early rather then late. I was worried as I rolled through transition that I wouldn’t find our stuff, but I spied the backpack on the ground. Everything was wet by this point and there was standing water on the backpack itself. Joy! I didn’t have to change anything but my shoes, this is when I discovered that double knots are a bad thing. Eventually, I just my bike shoes off without untying them and stuck my very wet feet into my somewhat wet running shoes and I was off.

The run leg

I attempted to get a time on the running leg, but apparently failed to press the large red candy-like button twice. What can you do? At the start of the run I wasn’t feeling all that great, but around about 12 minutes on the watch there was a noticeable improvement. Call it a second wind. I didn’t really have any metrics to gage the effort with, so I just ran hard. I got passed three times on the run but again passed two dozen or so others.

I got to the turn around and started back without problems. On the way back, I could hear another participant catching up — breathing hard — then fall into tempo with me. It was a woman. Thinking back, I couldn’t remember many women on the way back before turnaround so I turned into pace monkey for her. I just held a good, hard tempo that I didn’t like much and made me want to stop; she just had to hold on. She did to, eventually pulling ahead and catching another woman before crossing the line. I hope she placed well.

The only trouble on the run was some discomfort in my left lower leg. I fatigued the shin muscles in the first couple minutes. Usually, this is caused by my pushing off to strongly; it seems to be a symptom of me trying to hard or thinking to much. As long I can get the problem stopped, it usually goes away and that’s what happened here. On the upside, I believe that the run would have beaten my PR in a 5K by about a minute and a half.

Conclusion

People say that if you do a triathlon, you’ll either love it or hate it. I would have to say that I’m still neutral. I really didn’t enjoy the swim, but I know that I could improve in that area. As my freestyle swimming becomes more habitual, I think the problems that I experienced could be overcome. As for the bike and the run, I enjoyed each. They felt fast and satisfying. However, I know that I don’t want to do another this year. The swimming takes experience, and experience takes time. We’ll have to see how things work out next year.

The results of the race arrived today. I was 64th of 203 finishers overall, the 48th male finisher of 126, and the 4th in my age division (M30-35) of 14. The official time is 1:11:39. The lady who I mentioned either finished first in F30-35 (which is my guess) or 5th in F20-29, so she might have gotten some swag. There was even a guy there from Iowa City, though he finished 12 seconds ahead of me. The following is a table of the top six times in my age division.

Notice that the guy who finished 5th was seconds behind me, and the person chasing him is only about a minute behind. Now, look at the gap to 3rd; that gap is roughly four minutes or about 2/3 of a mile in distance. The next gap is roughly eight minutes to second, then about nine minutes to first. First in M30-35 is also the overall winner by about two minutes. I’m nearly 20 minutes behind the overall winner or a bit more then three miles of the run.

Tags: Racing, Results, Rookie's Triathlon, Sprint Distance, Triathlon