Race Report: Massachusetts State Triathlon (Olympic)

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

Race Report: Stamford KIC IT Triathlon (Olympic) June 26th, 2011

10:pm, Saturday, June 25^th. Went to bed in the guest room so I wouldn’t wake Karen in the morning. Everything all packed.

Note the bare feet on top of the shoes coming into T2

3:00am, Sunday morning. Awake and drink a fruit smoothie that I had set up in a bucket of ice. Delicious and glycogen-orific. Go back to bed.

4:30am, Out of bed, make an iced coffee in a to-go mug. Drive 10 minutes to Stamford.
The swim waves were scheduled to start at 6:30am, so I arrived in downtown Stamford at...

5:00am. This event has a strange two-transition area setup: T1 was down at Cummings beach, and T2 was up in the middle of town at Columbus Park. That was disconcerting because it added a set of logistics to the race that I hadn't had to deal with before,

Prepping for the First Olympic Triathlon

Preparing for the First Olympic Triathlon: 
The Stamford KIC IT on June 26^th, 2011

I don’t believe stepping up to an Olympic distance Triathlon is going to be incremental. The longest event I've done before now is a Sprint Tri with 1/2 mile swim, 10 mile bike and a 3.1 mile run. This would more than double that with a 0.9 mile swim, 24.8 miles on the bike, and 6.2 miles running.

But at least I had the good sense, or the good luck, to pick an event that takes place in Stamford, Connecticut, 10 minutes from home. That removed the travel/hotel part of the logistics. And I was able to prepare in ways that I wouldn't have been able to if the course had been three hours away.

Picked up the race packet Friday afternoon. Race number 392. I like it. Lot's of numeric integrity there. Two times nine is eighteen, which divided by three is six, making the sequence 2, 3, 6, 9. Okay, so I’m stretching things a little, but

Race Report: Escape the Cape Sprint Triathlon

So this race was my chance to redeem myself from the miserable swim that sunk my performance at the NE Season Opener.

Finish line

Escape the Cape Tri - Onset, MA - Sat June 4th

Gorgeous 73F dry, sunny, breezy New England Day in a truly quaint village at the top of buzzards bay. The swim was in the town's beautiful little harbor - a straight line swim from point to point, 1/3 mile with a light breeze and current against us. Then a 10 mile bike followed by the 5k (3.1 mile) run.

Pre-swam the course for about 250 yards to get used to the sightlines, water temps and visibility. Swam hard to warm up the breathing gear (this was one of my lessons learned from the last event...

Laundry

I swear I have never done so much laundry in my life as I have in the last eight months since I took up Triathlon training.

When you're working out once or twice a day, every day of the week, you gotta keep up. I often come home from a workout, stand in front of the washer and strip naked, feeding my stuff right in.

Even if you have six sets of workout clothes for each sport (which I don't, although I have to admit I have incrementally "added" to my collection of compression shorts, technical T's, "really nice" running socks, running tights, warming sleeves and so forth) you simply can not leave a pile of sweaty stuff on the bedroom floor. Whether you're married or not, that will come back to bite you. And I know you wouldn't dream

Vitamins at odds with exercise?

Go figure. Just when you think you're doing everything right, you find out that the vitamins you're taking may be actually negating some of the positive effect of your workouts. XU69EG84GDWM

In this article in the New York Times, a study indicates that antioxidant supplements Vitamin C & E may actually defeat

Somebody's Hero

Every once in a while I wonder what motivators could possibly have driven me to, what most others consider, the extremes I've adopted as my new lifestyle.

NE Season Opener - Finish Line

One thing I'm very clear about is that I would never, ever, have undertaken this kind of training regimen without some very strong "pull" motivators. There are both push (stick) and pull (carrot) motivators in the mix, but for me, the ones that pull are stronger.

The push motivators are obvious: "gee I'd like to lose some weight" or "I really should get to the gym and get in better shape". You sense right away how little emotional energy those generate, and how non-specific they are. I've had these for years. They are the lazy fat slobs of the world of motivators. They opine. They gesticulate. They may even whine. But they don't kick ass.

They become a box you need to check - a nag. You usually don't put any specific goals around them,

Race Report: NE Season Opener Sprint - May 8th, 2011

Well, that was interesting! 

It turned out to be a beautiful day with sun breaking through puffy, scattered clouds by start time - which event organizers pushed back to 9:00am so the air temperatures could rise. It ended up being 50F by the start. 

The event was spectacularly well organized with a great sound system and D.J. spinning tunes so you could hear it all across the lake. It had sold out weeks in advance with 370 Triathletes and another 330 for the Duathlon. Copious instructions, route maps, race packs, email bulletins and updates were sent out to all competitors during the weeks before, so even though I had never done this event before, I felt pretty comfortable with all the logistics. Kudos to Tim Richmond and his team at Max Performance.

I arrived in the area early enough Saturday to drive the bike course before dark. That turned out to be a good thing to do. I had already studied the course,

NE Season Opener: projecting finish times and final prep

Projected Finish Times

Even as I started to figure out what events I would do this season, I began to wonder how I would do. At that distance though, I had no idea and I just kept telling myself, it's a warm-up event, it will be a lot of fun, just keep training and the times will take care of themselves.

Now that the Northeast Season Opener is less than a week away, I've got a recent running Time Trial behind me, and a I'll do an updated bike time trial this week, I've dialed in the expected timings a little.

For what's called the "Sprint" triathlon, the "typical" distances are 1/2 mile swim, 10 mile bike, 3.1 mile run. Strangely, there are no real standards,