Race Report

Okay, I quick report as I don't have too much time. Work is pretty busy, of course.

Although the race didn't go as well as I had hoped in terms of my bike and run I was happy with the overall effort. I think a lot of the fast guys most have stayed in bed, as I did pretty well in the overall placing (13). My time was 5:15, which on this course I think was pretty good. I think on a course like Eagleman (which I did last year) this would have been a sub 5. I talked to one really fast guy (5 OA) who said he felt this course was at least 20 minutes slower than an average 1/2. This was the first year for the race and the organization was pretty good. I think there is some worry that b/c the bike course was so tough, there may not be a lot of repeaters. Lots of people walking bikes up hills.

Swim
I wanted to swim a little harder on this one and try to find some feet to follow. They ended up trimming a little off of the course at the last minute due to some buoy issues. We figure it was about 100-200 yards short. I did find some feet about 1/2 way through and was able to keep on them for the most part. I did find that I was kind of snaking back and forth a little (or maybe he was), but it definetly helped. About the last 300-500 yards I got up with a group of about 5 and this helped a little. Didn't have to sight too much. I hit the beach in 29:30 and then had about a 1/4 mile uphill run. I had decided to stop just after the beach and strip my suit there. I would make the run up the hill easier and for me the suit comes off easier just out of the water. This worked out well and really helped out my overall transition. Got going on the bike pretty well. The only down side to the good swim, was that my HR was pretty high (close to my bike LT) and it took a while on the bike to get this back down.

Bike
This didn't go as I had hoped. I had a power number in mind (210-220 W) and had done this in training on an 80 mile ride with no problems and was able to get off and run an hour after that ride. During that training ride my HR was good (about 10 below LT) and that was my goal here. But I just couldn't get those power numbers AND my HR was way higher. It was all I could do to keep my HR under my LT (~173 on the bike). But I rode the hills well. Many people would pass me on the hills during the first lap, only to coast down the other side. I would climb steady and then hit 40+ on the downhills as I was still pedaling. On the second lap, nobody was passing me, either up or down. I was pretty much even between the two laps. Hit T2 feeling pretty good.

Run
Out of T2, I was running with someone from my club who had a really good ride. He was hoping to do 7-7:10 pace, which is what I was thinking, so we ran for a little while. But on the first hill he pretty much realized that was going to be too fast for him. So I left him. I was around 7 min pace for the first 4 miles, but this course has a tough 3/4 mile climb in it and the footing was all gravel road. We did this climb 2 times and this hurt the overall pace. I was able to pick off a couple more guys and overall my run was pretty good. My stomach did start to not feel so well about mile 9 or so. At this point there was no one behind me, and the guys ahead of me had about 5 minutes on me. So I pretty much cruised on in. I wish I could have been closer to the 2 guys in front of me. They finished right near each other and I think I could have been in the mix if I would have ridden better.

I recovered pretty well, although didn't eat enough as my stomach was not feeling so good. I also had done a 100 mile ride on Tuesday that week and a hard friday ride/run. I think this probably had an affect, although I didn't feel that fatigued.

This week I have recovered pretty well, although my workouts still haven't been "on". This is a big weekend and next weekend is even bigger as we had up to LP. This weekend is a 5 hour brick on Sat (3 and 2 hour run...gotta get some longer runs going) and a 4 hour ride on Sunday.

Later,
Dave