More Triathlon Photos

Click on the link below to see more photos that the race photographer took.

http://www2.brightroom.com/browser.aspx?eid=81418&bib=115&pwd=

The triathlon

Yesterday was the big day.  I was about 10 minutes slower than my goal.  My goal didn't include transitions, which I need to get much better at.  The swim went better than what I thought it would, I finished with a time of 12:51.  I didn't get kicked in the face, although I did take one to the chest.  I was in the thick of things battling it out with everyone else up to the first turn.  After that turn, it was like I was swimming all by myself, which was nice.  I don't know if I passed anyone or not, I was just swimming.  I was gassed though coming out of the water.  It was all I could do to manage a slight jog up the hill to the transition. 

T1 was a little rough, I spent almost 3 minutes trying to get myself ready to head out on the bike course.  It was a cluster.

I didn't do as well on the bike section as I would have liked.  I don't know what my problem was, but I couldn't climb hills to save my life.  If there was one thing I knew going into the race that was going to be my strong suit, it was hill climbing.  Where I really caught up to people was on my incredibly fast downhills.  As the bike section wore on, the more tired I got mentally and I started to fall.  I fell at least 6 times.  Which cost me a lot of time.  One of the times I landed on my handlebar, which has left a nice bruise in the middle of my chest. Bike was 01:07:01

T2 was better, but still slower than what I thought it was.  The speed laces were a huge help though with the bike and running shoes.

Then came the run, my ending pace was faster than what I thought it would be.  I came in with a pace sub 10 minutes per mile.  It was still a huge disappointment because I had to walk portions of the run.  Part of my problem was over-hydrating on the bike and having a whole bunch of liquid sloshing around in my stomach.  I think I should have downed a gu towards the end of the bike, because it felt like I had no energy left in my legs.  Although I did manage to crank out a nice sprint to the finish.  Run time was 38:29

 

 

Here are some post race pics where I was kind of hating life.

Oh yeah!! I whipped the cold water!!

I don't know how far or how long I swam today, but I figured out how to swim in cold water.  It was still good to at least have it figured out.  Went on my last training run this evening.  The run felt good and I managed to do it with all negative splits.

Shit that's cold

My rental wetsuit came in the mail a couple of days ago, and today was the first day that I was actually able to get out in the open water for a test.  When we left the boat launch the water temp was 65 degrees.  After multiple rain showers, the water temp a half mile from the boat launch had dropped to 58 degrees.  I was horribly unprepared for swimming in cold water.  I swam for about two minutes, but the cold had made my lungs clamp down so hard I could barely breath.  I made it a whole 75 yards and had to stop.  It's disappointing, but I'm glad it happened.  I've done some research tonight on cold water swimming, and now know what to practice tomorrow.

MTB TRIFECTA!!!

I came up just a bit short of completing the local MTB trifecta today.  I got dropped off at Cannonsburg State Game area, rode the MTB trail there.  That was a great ride, except for the massive stick that I managed to kick up into my rear tire.  That little incident violently sent me to the ground.  I finished there and rode up to the Cannonsburg ski hill to ride the trail there.  Decent ride, nothing really sticks out at me from this ride.  From there I rode up to the trail close to my house, Luton Park.  By the time I got to Luton, my legs were tired, but I decided to press on.  I rode part of the orange loop and finished the black loop and decided I had gassed my legs pretty good so far and didn't need to do the red and yellow loops.  Combined, those two loops are about 3 miles.  So I finished the rest of the blue loop and orange loop and went home.  Take a look at my goals for this race over on the right side of the page.

Taper week day #1

Took off on this nice run this AM before I headed off to the pool for 30 laps.  Wasn't going to do any trail running today, but I just could help myself.

Training ride dedicated to Remus

Matt, thanks for the motivation this afternoon.  I was really fighting with myself to get up and do this ride. Did two laps at Luton Park this afternoon.  Had I not ridden to the trail, I would have stuck around and done a third.  Although by the time I got done with my second lap, the trail was starting to get jammed up with "shirties", so it was probably time to go.  Overall, good ride thought I was faster than what my stats indicate.

May 7 Training Ride

I needed a nice long ride to boost my training a bit.  While Rachael was doing some cleaning at here old place I got to go ride on some of my pre-Rockford routes.

Trail run

Decided to do a trail run on the MTB trail close to my house.  It was a hard run, but an absolute blast.  The other thing I think I started to realize while I was out there, man was not meant to run on flat level surfaces.  I have been struggling with pain in various areas of my body during training.  None of those areas hurt tonight after the run.

I'm still training, just haven't had the time to update my blog

One thing I'm noticing when I've been out running or biking is that I'm much better when I'm following someone.  What I mean by that is that my heart rate seems to remain steady even with moderate increases in pace until I pace them.  I expect that in the triathlon I will have plenty of people to chase and pass.  I'm still swimming like mad.  I had a bit of a setback last week though with running and biking due to taking a spinning class at the gym on a rainy day.    Anyway, here's a favorite of the past couple of weeks.

Ft. Custer