Having languished all summer due to a nagging hip problem, I gave up mountain biking racing this year. I became sort of an armchair athlete, hearing the stories of my fellow Mangos — John T. competing in his second Ironman triathlon, John M. completing his second STP double-century ride, and Scott and Susana doing a three month bike tour of Europe. I maintained a limited training regimen, though, and started going to a physical therapist, which improved my hip’s range of motion greatly. I decided to try and get back into shape and picked a sprint triathlon (my second ever) as my goal — the Black Diamond Triathlon.
My road bike was out of commission until I could fix the seat post, so my core training consisted of (almost) daily bike commutes on my mountain bike with John M. He would ride his road bike, so I managed to build up a sort of competitive advantage trying to keep up with him on my heavier mountain bike with knobby tires (to John’s credit, 9 times out of 10 I would end up drafting him as he pulled me into downtown).
After arriving at Nolte State Park, I set up in the transition area, neatly organizing my gear for the various race legs. The race was to begin at 9:00a, so I got my wetsuit on 20 minutes beforehand and headed to the lake to warm up. “Warm up” turned out to be a figurative term, as the water was about 60 degrees. Even with the wetsuit, that was mighty brisk for a morning swim. The bulk of the racers were in the water awaiting the start, but the race official didn’t show up until much later. We all stood around in the water muttering about how freakin’ cold it was.
At 9:20, they finally counted down to the start, and we were off. I let the bulk of the swimmers by me before I leapt into the churning water. I kept my head up and did the breaststroke and sidestroke until the pack thinned out. As had happened at my first tri in 2003, I soon started hyperventilating. But unlike my panic that time, I knew that this might happen and was mentally prepared for it. I eased things way down as much as I could and stuck to the sidestroke and paddling on my back for the first 1/4 mile. I noticed that a fair number of other swimmers were doing the same thing, so I didn’t feel so bad.
Rounding the far buoy, I started to feel more at ease and started a slow crawl — lifting my head every 5th or 6th stroke to sight the next buoy. The shoreline never seemed to get closer, but sure enough I continued my barge-like swimming and reached terra firma. I had hoped to do the swim in 18:00 (factoring in the expected hyperventilation), but completed this leg in 19:21 (solidly in the mid-pack of 230 competitors).
From the shore, T1 consisted of a run up a steep hill to the transition area, where I stripped off my wetsuit, and donned my cycling shoes, shirt and helmet, and ran off with my bike. My T1 time was listed as 3:00 — curiously the exact same time as half of the others. I’m guessing that there was a problem with the timing chip reading at either the entry or exit of T1, so they gave everyone an average time until the problem was fixed. (In a follow-up conversation with the race organizer, they did in fact have a temporary malfunction with the timing equipment at the entry into T1, so they simply assigned an average time for T1 and then calculated swim times accordingly).
Having trained exclusively on my mountain bike, I felt quite nimble on my road bike. The bike course was an out-and-back on fairly flat county roads with a few short, rolling hills. I cranked it up to about 25mph and passed a huge number of riders throughout the 11-mile ride, and was only passed once. After flailing across the lake, it was refreshing to be on my no-name, steel road bike passing one of these. My bike time was 33:14 (the 26th fastest time out of the entire pack, or the top 10%!), meeting my goal to average 20mph.
T2 went slightly quicker, as I simply had to drop off my bike and helmet and change into running shoes (in 1:57).
The 2.8 mile run consisted of two laps of trail running around Deep Lake. It was mostly flat, but had a couple short ups and downs. Half a mile into the run, the need to urinate was overpowering. Since I’m not a seasoned enough triathlete, I opted not to piss myself, and simply picked the nearest tree on which to relieve myself. I must have been way over hydrated, as it seemed like I’d never stop peeing. I’m guessing I lost a good 45 second watering that tree. As I started running again, a woman ran up behind me and asked “are you 5 pounds lighter now?”. I kept up a respectable 8:45 pace for the run, completing it in 25:00 and turning in a finishing time of 1:22:33 — 2:30 short of my goal of 1:20:00.
Overall I placed 68th out of 230 (see results here) — almost the top quarter! But in my age group (35-40), I placed a pitiful 12th out of 15. Even given my recurring swim problems, I have to say that the sprint triathlon has become a favorite goal of mine — a nice departure from all of the biking I do. I’d like to work up to doing an Olympic-length tri sometime soon, but for now, it’s the start of cyclocross season!
Posted by jason at September 27, 2006 1:00 AM | TrackBack