Sunday July 17th, 2011
Dennison Lake State ParkWinchedon, Mass
Olympic Distance: 1.5k Swim, 40K Bike, 10k Run (.9 mile swim/24 mile bike/6.2 mile run). About 380 competitors. Race start time: a leisurely 8:00am.
Oh well, I guess it had to happen. Not a great race for me.
Beautiful day, sunny with a few scattered clouds, if perhaps a little warm. It wasn't any hotter than Stamford 3 weeks before. In any case, I didn't really feel the heat until the run.
I had a decent swim although I really had to shuck and weave through a lot more traffic this time, guys in my own wave and the pink-capped women in the wave that started 5 minutes before. This wasn't all bad because
I picked up a fast mover from my group and just slapped his feet the first half of the course - save a little energy! Eventually though, the pink caps were so thick, he zigged to get around one, I zagged, and I lost him.
I have to say though, that the jockeying for position at the start was a little more aggresive than I've experienced previously. I found myself pacing quite a little parade of fairly fast swimmers (at least they were fast in the first 300 yards) up the course to the first mark (the course looked absolutely endless from the beach).
The swim split came in at 23:30 - nothing wrong with that, and with a rank of 47th overall, and the fastest swim in my age group, something to be pleased about - maybe...
The maybe comes in at the post-mortem, where I wondered if I didn't go too hard in the water, taking some performance off the bike and run legs. A while ago I watched a really good TV program on the Kona 2010 Ford Ironman event. The first guy out of the water was a champion college swimmer from somewhere. He had his minute of fame as he came out of the water and then you never heard of him again. Not even to show the agony of defeat, yeesh. I do not want to be that guy.
It was an okay bike leg, but at 1:18 total time and 18.7mph average, clearly not what I could do. It was two loops of a 12 mile circuit. I felt leg-tired as soon as I got on the bike - and didn't really come out of it the whole ride. It felt like I didn't have enough rest/taper for this race and dogged it right from the start.
My bike time was 4 minutes behind the 1st guy in my age group and a whopping 7 minutes slower than the fastest bike split in age group. Sad. I could understand being 2nd or 3rd in AG behind some monster cyclist, but seven minutes? Yeesh. With a bike rank of 144 overall, clearly not where I should have been based on previous events this year.
I also screwed up my T1 badly - I was out of T1 quickly and on the bike okay, but getting my feet into the shoes was a real sh&t show. My right shoe actually popped out of the pedal cleat twice before I was able to get my foot strapped in to the shoe. I screwed around for almost the whole first quarter-mile, weaving around, endangering other riders and generally going real slow out of the park.
Lesson learned on that: practice this type of tricky stuff again before every event - and, note to self: the whole "running out of T1 barefoot, rubber bands holding the shoes in the clips" routine is a little tricky.
My lower back also hurt like hell the second loop of the ride. I kept having to come up out of aero to see if I could stretch it out or something (that has not happened in a single one of my bike workouts!). While I was riding, I thought I might not be able to do the run, but as it turned out I didn't even think about it once I got off the bike.
The run leg was a total disaster. About 58:41 total time, a 9:20 average pace. I was really tired and struggling coming out of transition. Started slow but somehow managed an 8:12 pace the first mile. But I got discouraged because I felt so bushed. Two times during the 2nd mile, I walked for 30 seconds. Then twice again in mile 3. One was a water station I walked through. Still the average on miles 2 and 3 were just over 9min/mi. By the 4th mile I walked for longer 3 times and the average dropped to 9:42/mi. Same average for mile 5. I was pacing a guy in my age group for a while in mile 6 so it started well, but then couldn't hang on to him and got discouraged watching him run away while I kicked down to a walk for more than a minute.
Maybe I wasn't rested enough. Also, it was hot, so that's a factor. But Stamford was just as hot and had almost no shade on the run while this was pretty shady. Maybe I overcooked it on the bike. I know I wasn't mentally as up for this race as I was Stamford, so that's a factor.
Halfway through the first loop on the bike, I saw a guy by the side of the road changing a flat and I thought to myself "That's what I need right now - a flat tire so I can rest up for a few minutes". I did end up dropping a chain the first time up the climb, but I was lucky - popped my left foot out of the cleat and threaded the thing back on with one finger while hopping forward and advancing my right foot. No more than 30 seconds damage. That'll teach me to shift front and rear dérailleurs at the same time. Nate told me not to do that.
Maybe I would have been more comfortable with the bike course if I had ridden it once or twice before. But there was basically one mile-long climb that wasn't all that steep, and I felt like I managed effort on it pretty well, so I don't even know about that.
I'm a little perplexed and disappointed. Not a great race - but I guess there will be those races - not all of them can be your day. Maybe this just wasn't my day.
The worst is that I finished sixth in AG, and two of those guys ran by me, all at just about the same time, at mile 5.8. So I had them all beat up to that point. I didn't need a great run to beat them - I just needed a mediocre run - something like 8:15 would have served just fine.
I'll have to think on how to apply some of this to the NYC Tri, which is next - August 7th, 2011.
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