Pre-Race
Saturday morning and I was up at 5:05am to take a shower and
get ready to go. My wife and daughter were going with too, so it was a family
affair. We were in the car shortly after 6am for the 2 hour drive to Barron
Wisconsin which is about 45 minutes north of Eau Clare Wisconsin.
This small town’s community center is the host of this
triathlon. Because it had a pool swim, they are limited to the number of people
they can actually take. They offer a “novice” division which was a super-sprint
distance, and an “advanced” division which was a sprint distance. I chose to do
the advanced distance which was a 400y pool swim, 13.1 mile bike, and a 5k run.
Arriving about 8:15, we walked into the gym where transition
was taking place. There was only one small bike rack so people who had kick
stands on their bikes were setting up in the middle of the gym, those of us
without kickstands leaned our bikes on the wall around the gym. Got checked in,
and familiarized myself with the pool and transition areas. Then set up my
transition area.
I looked around and there was a wide variety of bikes.
Mountain bikes, 10 speeds, road bikes and even a bike with a basket on the
front. There was only about 4 true triathlon bikes there, and couple of good
road bikes and 1 of those with aero bars. I am riding a road bike I bought last
year, but I do not have aero bars on it.
Swimming and Breaking
the #1 Triathlon Rule
About 8:50 I headed into the pool area. They were doing the
pool swim in the order of bib number and starting with the advanced division so
I was to be the 10th person in the water. They had volunteers
counting laps on the far end of the pool for the swimmers. So I sat down in a
row of chairs they had lined up for athletes along one side of the pool.
The first wave of swimmers was off. Lane 1 had a high school
swimmer who was part of a team and he zoomed through it. The other
swimmers…..OMG, it was painful to watch. I couldn’t believe how many people
struggled so much with the swim. One just rocked the breaststroke, one did a
mix of side/back/front/breast, and others stopped to rest every 25 yards. I can
only imagine what some of those looked like in the other division.
Finally it was my turn. I and another guy got into the pool
to start. I had commented to my wife earlier that this guy was a swimmer
because he was all shoulders, arms and chest. The typical triangle shape of a
swimmer. Sure enough once we got started I looked over and he just BLEW by me
in the water. I saw him after the event and he said that he was a college
swimmer, but had never done the other events. Makes perfect sense.
So going in to this race, I knew I was going to break the
“nothing new on race day rule” in one specific area. I had never worn just my 1
piece tri kit to swim in. I swam with it and my wetsuit on, so I knew I didn’t
have any mobility issues, but never swam without the wetsuit. It turns out that
thing is VERY draggy. A 400y swim that should have taken me 6:30-6:40 to
complete I did in 7:12, but worse is that I had to work really hard just to get
that 7:12. So the event that I had the most confidence in started out pretty
bad. So I need to buy myself a 2-piece tri suit if I am going to do this again.
Transition 1
So out of the water and into transition. No running as the
floors were super slippery. Got to transition and spent some extra time drying
myself off. With temps right at 40 degrees, I didn’t want to be super wet
heading out and getting cold. I threw on my bike jacket and gloves for my
hands. I have always biked in socks so I had to get those on my clammy feet
too. So it took a bit to get through my first transition.
Biking and How Roy
Tried to Kill Me
We had driven the bike course a few weeks earlier as we
passed by it on a vacation. So I knew that the course was rather hilly,
especially the first 2/3 of it. I have not done a ton of outside riding, and
nothing that amounted to this much hill climbing, but I trusted my training and
headed out on my bike which I had named Roy when I got it last fall.
I passed several people right away within the first 2 miles.
There was a segment of road between about miles 2-4 that had cracks/bumps that
was kinda rough. Nothing scary, but you definitely felt them. I hit one of the
bumps and nearly crashed because my hands suddenly fell forward pitching my
whole body forward. I quickly recovered and started to try and figure out what
happened. It felt like my handlebars had slipped. Sure enough, my handle bars
had rotated by about 30 degree! My bike computer was almost unreadable in that
position.
So I had to adjust my position on the bike so that I wasn’t
leaning into the shifters but rather was on the main bars so that it wouldn’t
rotate any more. I also discovered a few more miles into it that I could rotate
it back up by pushing on the drop bars. So that’s how the rest of my ride went.
Having it rotate it back and forth. So weird that it happened at all.
But I was racing so I just kept going the best that I could.
I thought I would watch my power meter more but I really didn’t, I just went by
feel. Pushing extra hard on short hills, shifting as needed to keep the pain
level in my legs about the same all the time. I passed several more people
during the rest of the ride. I wasn’t sure if I had passed everyone or not, but
I knew there couldn’t be too many people in front of me.
There turned out to be one last steep hill in mile 12 that
was a killer requiring my lowest gear. Once through that it was a short
distance through town back to the community center and transition into the run.
13.2 miles in 44:23 just under an 18mph average. I was SUPER happy with that.
My goal was 45 minutes and with the hills I wasn’t sure how I would do.
Transition 2
I was the perfect temperature on the bike, and I had drank
nearly my full bottle of tailwind on the bike too. So I was pretty well set up
for the run. I took off the bike jacket, and shoes, threw on a light long
sleeve sweatshirt and my shoes and I was off. I don’t have quick tie laces on
my shoes which is something I will need to invest in going forward as well.
1:26 for my transition time.
Running – Well Really
Run-Walking
The run course follows the first 1.5 miles of the bike
course before turning around and of course there is a pretty good hill you go
up and down twice. With my lingering hamstring injury I have not been doing a
lot of running in my training. It is by far my weakest area. I have also not
done much running after biking.
So starting out this run my calves just didn’t really want
to do much. I abandoned the 2:30/1:00 run walk pace pretty early and went to a
run walk based on feel. More frequent but much shorter walk segments. I would
time some of the walks with steep parts of hills, and run longer on downhill
and flat segments.
I passed one guy on the run in the first half mile. I could
see one more guy in the distance that I knew I would catch. I wasn’t sure how
many people would pass me. When my watch beeped with my first mile time of 9:27
I was shocked. That’s really fast for me, especially with legs that don’t want
to work quite right. I stopped briefly for water at the turnaround point, then
just kept doing what I was doing.
9:30 for the second mile included that water stop. Then once
to the top of the hill, I could start running downhill back to the finish and
9:16 for the 3rd mile. I did get passed by one guy. The winner of
the event is a legit age group triathlete based on google so I assumed that even
though he started well after me in the pool, he would pass me on the run.
The run was a bit short of 5k as my watch said it was just
3.00 miles exactly which I did in 28:13, but that pace would have easily set a
5k PR if it was another 0.1 miles longer. I was a bit warm on the run, probably
didn’t really even need the sweatshirt, but nothing to the point of wanting to
take it off.
Results
When the final results were posted, there turned out to be a
total of 29 participants in the “advanced” sprint race. 23 men and 6 women. My
final time was 1:25:59 which was good enough for 7th overall, 7th
out of 23 men, and 6th out of 18 in the crazy 20-49 age group.
Against the overall field, I had the 6th fastest
swim, the 6th fastest bike, and the 13th fastest run.
Final Thoughts
I had set goals of 7:00 on the swim, 45:00 on the bike and
35:00 on the run and I nearly beat all those goals! Being a very small event
with a pool swim made this a very comfortable first triathlon to compete in. My
training over the winter paid off, and I was able to participate and really enjoy
this event. Next challenge is open water swimming.
It was very cool that my family wanted to watch this race
with me.
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