on to it...
Pre-Race:
Woke up around 4:00 to get some breakfast and get up north in time. Found a good parking space and made my way to the transition zone. I didn’t realize the racks were marked with race numbers and managed to setup on the right spot by chance. Pretty cool. Everything was set up and I chilled under a tree for a while.
Swim:
The water was warm and the air was cool. That is a recipe for fog. We couldn’t see more than a few buoys out down on the beach. I was in wave 12 (whats up with that?) so I had a while to stand around before we went off. Looking around I was one of the few without a wetsuit. The water was way warm so I think I made the right choice for me. We were called up to knee deep water and got a 5 second countdown. I started out front and was quickly in clean water, no drafting today. Sighting was immediately a problem. The fog at water level made sighting the next buoy really tough. I fought my way through the weeds early on and soon saw the leaders from the first wave on their return. Here is where I need to explain the layout off the course. The swim course was a simple out and back with a single line of buoys. This combined with the poor visibility meant there was a mix of people in the middle going opposite ways. Not good. I avoided several head on collisions throughout the rest of the swim. Things got real bad 2/3 of the way through when the fog was thicker and the buoys spaced out more. There were times when you couldn’t see the buoy ahead and had to just try to swim straight for a while. I struggled through that section and brought things home back through the weeds. Overall a decent swim.
Time: 31.46
T1: No issues.
Bike:
Starting in Wave 12 with a Sprint going on at the same time meant a lot of traffic on the course early on. I was calling out “on your left “ for 15 minutes straight. In hindsight I was probably riding way too hard at this point but I wanted to clear through the slower riders as soon as possible. 5-10 miles in the early formation of the peloton came up to me. I sat up and let them by but was annoyed with their pace and made the pass again within minutes. We went back and forth a couple of times and finally I sat up and let them get up the road a bit. I had the opportunity to chat a bit with another rider doing the same thing. We were both very frustrated at that point. I got back to racing my own race and the rest of the bike went fine. The final few sections included some headwind and in hindsight I probably pushed a bit too hard through these parts. Finished with a 2:36 split. A good time for me.
T2: this went really quick and I was out on the run
Run:
My Garmin failed to power up prior to the race so I was going on feel only. The first mile felt crappy as it usually does and I was concentrating on just getting the legs moving and going at an easy pace. I found myself running alongside a very pleasant lady who happened to have a watch. We maintained an 8:30-*8:40 pace all the way through mile 7 and things felt ok. Around mile 8 I was feeling the fatige set in and my stomach getting a bit funky. I bid my running partner farewell and slowed up to get myself put back together. I had slowed a bit but was still moving along until about three mmiles from the finish when my IT band decided it had had enough. This pretty mush ended my running for the day. I was forced to walk the last three miles of the “race”
The final run split was somewhere around 2:10.
Total time was 5:22
Post Race: I was pretty bummed about how the run ended for me. I clearly burned too many matches during the bike leg and paid for it in the end. I also was wasted for the balance of the day. I’m not sure if I swallowed too much lake water or what but I felt miserable for two or three days afterwards.
