This past weekend I raced in yet another sprint race. (also, I'm a bit behind in that I didn't post on my race at Music City Triathlon - another great race, reached the top of the podium with a solid, if unspectacular race). Got a few weeks rest after Music City and got roped into Mountain Lakes by my coach (come on, it's flat and fast). We headed down to Guntersville, Alabama for the race and stayed at the family lake house. The house was about 40 miles from race start so I set the phone for an early wake up call to allow for plenty of time to get there and warmed up.
I awoke when the sun started lighting the room. I knew I was in trouble. Rolled over and my cell phone was dead (dead means no alarm). Shot out of bed and grabbed the first clock I could find....6:05. Damn. I was 45 minutes away and the race stared at 7:30. I quickly threw on my tri suit, my fiancee threw together something for me to eat, grabbed the bike, transition bag and was in the car by 6:15. Packet pickup was schedule to close at 6:45....I rolled in the lot at 6:50. They graciously allowed me to get my race numbers...headed to transition (which was scheduled to close at 7:00) at about 6:55. Found my spot, laid everything out, got my gearing right on the bike and headed out of transition.
I don't like starting sprints without some sort of warm up...oddly my race number was 311...usually I am seated higher in the swim starts but I was thankful this morning because it gave me time to jog about on the nicely manicured grass around the swim start.
As we hit the water things felt good...but very crowded. Team Magic usually does a great job with their time trial starts but the lady sending everyone off was a bit overzealous. She was sending everyone in 1 to 1 & 1/2 second intervals. This normally wouldn't be a problem except that I was seated in a high group and you could walk out to the first buoy.....this meant a lot of congestion at the swim start. Oddly this congestion never really broke up during the swim. For the first time ever I experienced a type A jack*** during a race. Coming back in on the 600 yard swim with about 150 to go I once again found myself bottled up with slower swimmers. All of the sudden I felt someone grasp my lower leg, pull me backwards and as my head came out to see what was going on I heard "get the hell out of the way". I spun around looking for the guilty party only to see nothing. This was a good thing because I didn't want to get in a fight 150 yards off shore...I got back to swimming. Got out of the water and felt pretty good.
Headed up, got on the bike and trotted out of transition behind the crowds (getting the drift?). Out on the bike course the swim course congestion was more dangerous. I got into a good rhythm and was passing a good deal of cyclist on the course. The congestion led to pretty obvious drafting, but I have to admit that I don't know how anyone could have avoided it and still raced. I played leap frog with three strong cyclist for about 12 of the 16 miles. I backed off on the final 3 miles because I wanted a strong run. Got off the bike averaging over 23+ MPH on the course so I felt great about that, especially in light of pulling back a bit.
Got to T2 on threw on the running shoes and headed out on the run course. I felt great....I mean like a real runner right away. This doesn't happen for big boys like me often. I found myself running through the crowds and felt like I was really pushing the tempo...I was without my watch (see above re: dead phone race morning craziness) but I knew it was going to be a good time. I came across the line in front of my coach and family and they were all excited about how "fast" I had gone.
Well, this race put me on the top of the clydesdale podium in front of some real solid racers. I got home later that night and pulled up my splits...7:50 on the 600 swim (could have gone faster but had some issues), 41:58 on the 16.2 mile bike and 21:29 for the 5k (that's right, that's a 6:55/mile pace - I was shocked....all the hard work paying off). This led to a total race time of 1:15:31 and gave me the top podium by a 2:00+ plus margin. Great race, great course and coach was right...flat and fast.
Now, I have to see if I can take the successes I have had over the meat of this summer at Hy-Vee....to translate my sprint effort into a controlled effort for this olympic will be the biggest test....but this race certainly fueled the only confidence tank.
Good job! It's a shame that people have to act like that on the swim. A guy did that to me at the Kona HIM. I had to give him a taste of his own medicine.
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